Some considered him the oracle of the electronic age; others dismissed him as a charlatan. But his predictions are coming true with eerie accuracy. It's impossible to ignore such McLuhan phrases as "the global village" and "the medium is the message" as we surf the Net or watch such momentous events as the Mars landing or the Hong Kong takeover live on our personal computers or TV screens. His genius was in foreseeing such cultural upheavals and his studies continue to have an impact on the way we view the world.

Marshall McLuhan: The Medium and the Messenger traces the evolution of McLuhan's theories and is the key to understanding this enigmatic media guru.

Philip Marchand was the book columnist for the Toronto Star for eighteen years, before retiring to write books in 2008. He is the author of Just Looking, Thank You, a collection of magazine journalism (Macmillan, 1976); Marshall McLuhan: The Medium and the Messenger (Random House of Canada, 1989); Deadly Spirits, a crime novel (Stoddart, 1994); Ripostes, a collection of literary criticism (Porcupine's Quill, 1998); and most recently Ghost Empire: How the French Almost Conquered North America (McClelland & Stewart, 2005). His revised edition of Marshall McLuhan: The Medium and the Messenger has been reissued by Random House of Canada and MIT Press in the United States.

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"Beautifully written-- brings instant recognition of that weird, exhilarating vortex of ideas that McLuhanism meant to us." -The Globe and Mail
"An altogether splendid job... a labour of love-- Thanks to Philip Marchand's biography, McLuhan, the man, is back." -The Toronto Star
"Brilliant-- a graceful and eloquent discussion-- [Marchand's] book is McLuhanesque." -Robert Fulford

"Intensely absorbing." -The New York Times