Philip Marchand: Marshall McLuhan: The Medium and the Messenger (1989)

22 March 2014, dusan

He was described as “the greatest put-on artist of all time” and even as the greatest intellectual pioneer since Freud. Bouncing back and forth between the quiet University of Toronto campus and the glitzy world of the New York media, McLuhan was surely the most unlikely prophet of the sixties, yet his work underlies any serious discussion of the effects of media on our lives. (from the back cover)

Publisher Ticknor & Fields, New York, 1989
ISBN 0899194850
320 pages

Review (Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, The New York Times Books, 1989)
Review (E. Hamilton, Canadian Literature, 2001)
Review (Robert McKenzie, IPCT, 1994)
Review (William H. Melody, Information, Communication & Society, undated)

Author

PDF (50 MB, no OCR)

Hans Magnus Enzensberger: Critical Essays (1982)

16 March 2014, dusan

Among the twelve scintillating essays by a German poet, translator, critic and playwright presented here are “The Industrialization of the Mind”, “Poetry and Politics”, “Constituents of a Theory of the Media”, “Toward a Theory of Treason”, “Tourists of the Revolution”, “A Critique of Political Ecology” and “Two Notes on the End of the World”.

Edited by Reinhold Grimm, Bruce Armstrong
Translated by Michael Roloff, Stuart Hood, Judith Ryan, David Fernbach and Hans Magnus Enzensberger
Foreword by John Simon
Introduction by Reinhold Grimm
Publisher Continuum, New York, 1982
German Library series
ISBN 0826402585, 9780826402585
250 pages

Review (Heinz D. Osterle, The German Quarterly, 1986, in German)
Review (Kathy Acker, Artforum, 1983, very low resolution)

Publisher

PDF

Geoffrey Winthrop-Young: Kittler and the Media (2011)

6 March 2014, dusan

“With books such as Discourse Networks and Gramophone, Film, Typewriter and the collection Literature, Media, Information Systems, Friedrich Kittler has established himself as one of the world’s most influential media theorists. He is also one of the most controversial and misunderstood.

Kittler and the Media offers students of media theory an introduction to Kittler’s basic ideas. Following an introduction that situates Kittler’s work against the tumultuous background of German 20th-century history (from the Second World War and the cultural upheaval of the late 1960s to reunification), the book provides succinct summaries of Kittler’s early discourse-analytical work inspired by French post-structuralism, his media-related theorising and his most recent writings on cultural techniques and the notation systems of Ancient Greece.

This clear and engaging overview of a fascinating theorist will be welcomed by students and scholars alike of media, communication and cultural studies.”

Publisher Polity, 2011
Theory and Media series
ISBN 0745644066, 9780745644066
165 pages

Publisher

PDF (updated on 2019-12-8)