McLuhan frequently quoted Walter Ong's "Ramus, Method, and the Decay of Dialogue" (1958), which evidently had prompted McLuhan to write "The Gutenberg Galaxy". Ong wrote a highly favorable review of this new book in "America". However, Ong later tempered his praise, by describing McLuhan's "The Gutenberg Galaxy" as "a racy survey, indifferent to some scholarly detail, but uniquely valuable in suggesting the sweep and depth of the cultural and psychological changes entailed in the passage from illiteracy to print and beyond."