I found McLuhan difficult to follow. His ideas are spread on his thick books and sometimes it's hard to make sense of all of them at first. This book was a great intro to his work. It gives a good overview and reading the books afterwords becomes a fun pleasure.

Terrence Gordon, who also wrote a book on McLuhans thoughts and life, gives a cohesive and concise introduction to this genius' work. Although the idea of McLuhan for beginners might be a contradiction in itself, one needs to start somewhere, and I suggest this one to be a great start. Citing from all of McLuhans works and some more obscure titles, Gordon makes the impression that he is very knowledgable of McLuhan, as well as his theories, being able to make analogies and modern day references for anyone to understand. This book will also give you the appreciation and depth of McLuhans work without losing the message in its compactness of thought. Highly reccomended for those interested in McLuhans works.

Thinking this would help me better understand Saussure and the roots of modern linguistics, I bought and read this book.

It is not helpful at all, and definitely not a Cliff's Notes to Saussure.

I got this book because I was having so much trouble getting behind Saussure's Course in General Linguistics (available here in amazon), a required text for my college course in Linguistics.

The illustrations usually do not illuminate the text, and seldom offer concrete examples of Saussure's theories. A few times, there is a huge hunk of text, illustrated only with a line drawing of Saussure! Saussure's work is a lot to digest, and the sort of reader (like me) who is attracted to a book like this is in need of some simple explanations and illustrations that really make the text come alive. The book actually makes matters more complex. There is little attempt to meaningfully place Saussure in history, and no mention of how differing modern liguistic theories evolved from either illumination of or dissent from Saussure. This sort of historical context, which I now understand, would be a really helpful feature in an illustrated guide to Saussure. This book is actually a great little example of how NOT to write an idiot's guide.

The Gordon/Lubell book only made my confusion worse, and I ended up slogging on through Course in General Linguistics, pestering my professors after every lecture, and so on. My final "A" owes nothing to Saussure For Beginners.

I would be most grateful to any scholar of Linguistics who can visit this review site and post a comparison of the Gordon book to a more simple writing on Saussure. Future first-year Linguistics students will appreciate it.

If you have not read Saussure before, this is a great advance organizer on his thinking. If you have read him, it is a fine review. You finish the book with a good practical knowledge of Saussure's language and concepts, grounded in the confidence to leap into Structuralism and Deconstruction.

Saussure for Beginners is an excellent intro to the man whom is credited with as the the creator of modern linguistics. Well written and somewhat easy. This book will surely be taken in stride if you intend to understand exactly what Saussure was saying. As a beginner myself, I found some of the theories confusing. Yet, as I found out later, it was not the writing, it was the theory itself because linguistics is a tricky subject if not approached with some caution. I dont know of any other book that would be a good introduction to the subject, not only of Saussure, but of linguistics itself. Saussure has influenced so many others from Chomsky, Lacan, Derrida, Barthes and so many others. Overall not as fun as many other For Beginners books, however there is certainly more information displayed here. I definately reccomend this book before any other books on linguistics (yes, even before Saussures own posthumous book 'Course on General Linguistics').

I purchased this book because I was interested in learning as much as I could about the enigmatic Marshall McLuhan. Unfortunately, Mr. McLuhan has failed to find his ideal biographer in this work. Marshall McLuhan was the media intellectual from Canada who wrote, taught and spoke presciently of the effects of media on ourselves and our culture. Much of his work was rather heady stuff, and out of the reach of the dillettante. Even his most famous phrase, "the medium is the message" is poorly understood by many, including some who are thought to be blessed with large portions of gray matter. And the author of this biography W. Terrence Gordon can't seem to find the formula for delivering palatable explainations of McLuhan's catchphrases. The book unevenly shifts from the recounting of McLuhan's life, to the development of his groundbreaking research and novel ideas on everything from the ancient Trivium to electronic media, and he never settles into a comfortable pace. One can sense that McLuhan's life was unique, compelling and interesting, but it is rendered dry and antiseptic in this telling, and our author fares even more poorly in attempting to school us in the intellectual legacy of McLuhan, never properly defining terms in some instances, jumping way over our heads in others, and most maddening of all, sticking 80-some pages of notes at the end of the book which would have served us far better as foot-notes or inclusions in the main text. All this having been said, the subject was interesting enough and the materials included specific enough, where I was able to find many interesting paths for further exploration, which made slogging through this ponderous book, worth the effort at the end... But as I said, this fascinating man's life is deserving of a far more interesting and organized writer's efforts.

Mr. Gordon concentrates on Mcluhan's intellectual development and shows McL.'s work as a single work in progress built on a unique foundation. It is not as merely gossipy as Marchand's biography, and not for the reader unfamiliar with the world of ideas McL. dealt with. There is nothing of the pop celebrity here, but a serious presentation of the intellectual ground under all of McLuhan's work.