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  • Published: 27 November 2008
  • ISBN: 9780141035826
  • Imprint: Penguin Classics
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 160
  • RRP: $29.99

The Medium is the Massage

An Inventory of Effects



30 years after its publication, The Medium is the Massage remains McLuhan's most entertaining, provocative, and piquant book

Well known for coining the term 'Global Village', Marshall McLuhan's thinking was, and still is, revolutionary. His theories, many of which are illustrated in this astonishing 'inventory of effects', force us to question how modes of communication have shaped society. This is an astonishing work by a truly astonishing man.

The Penguin on Design series includes the works of creative thinkers whose writings on art, design and the media have changed our vision forever. This is one of four books in that series.

  • Published: 27 November 2008
  • ISBN: 9780141035826
  • Imprint: Penguin Classics
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 160
  • RRP: $29.99

About the authors

Bruno Munari

Bruno Munari was an Italian artist and designer, who contributed in many fields of both visual (paint, scultpture, film, industrial design, graphics) and non-visual arts (literature, poetry.)

John Berger

John Berger was born in London in 1926. He is well known for his novels & stories as well as for his works of nonfiction, including several volumes of art criticism. His first novel, 'A Painter of Our Time', was published in 1958, & since then his books have included the novel 'G.', which won the Booker Prize in 1972. In 1962 he left Britain permanently, & he now lives in a small village in the French Alps.

Susan Sontag

Susan Sontag was born in Manhattan in 1933 and studied at the universities of Chicago, Harvard and Oxford. Her non-fiction works include Against Interpretation, On Photography, Illness as Metaphor, AIDS and its Metaphors and Regarding the Pain of Others. She is also the author of four novels, a collection of stories and several plays. Her books are translated into thirty-two languages. In 2001 she was awarded the Jerusalem Prize for the body of her work, and in 2003 she received the Prince of Asturias Prize for Literature and the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade. She died in December 2004.