Book and Media Studies

In what is perhaps his most widely known work, McLuhan foregrounds the media themselves rather than simply the content they carry--as famously expressed in his aphorism, "the medium is the message"--and elucidates his influential concept of "hot" and "cool" media.

In his pioneering social history of communication media, Innis studies the assumptions that different communication technologies take from and contribute to society, and the forms of power they encourage.

Expanding upon an enormously influential article by Shannon, this work laid out the fundamental elements of a communications system.

With the help of numerous examples and typically exhaustive endnotes, Herman and Chomsky explain how corporate-owned mass media, as profit-driven institutions, "manufacture" in the public mind consent for social, political, and economic policies.

In this survey of his own and others' work over the previous three decades, Ong identifies the fundamental characteristics of oral traditions, and traces the cultural effects of the transition from an oral-based stage of consciousness to one dominated by writing and print technologies.

Based on six lectures Innis delivered at Oxford University in 1948, Empire and Communications offers a broad historical survey of the influence of communications technologies on the rise and falls of empires.

A history of emergent media technologies in the late nineteenth century, combined with a theoretical examination of responses to such changes and their relevance to today's shifts in media technology.

A cultural history tracing the origins of the Information Society to the "Control Revolution" of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, which saw the development of such communication technologies as rotary printing, radio, television, and motion pictures.

Nothing the connection between the words "communication" and "community," Carey looks to shift the study of media and communication toward a renewed focus on its content and its role in forming culture. This revised edition includes a critical forward connecting Carey's work with contemporary issues, as well as a complete bibliography of his writings.

Italian philosopher and historian Rossi documents the historical development of the idea of a universal language.

In this influential philosophical treatise, Baudrillard argues that modern society has replaced all of reality and meaning with hollow signs and symbols.