Modernism in the Streets: A Life and Times in Essays

Resumen del libro

Essays that trace the intellectual life of a quintessential New York City writer and thinker

Marshall Berman was one of the great urbanists and Marxist cultural critics of the 20th and 21st centuries, and his brilliant, nearly sui generis book, All That Is Solid Melts Into Air, is a masterpiece of the literature on modernism. But like many New York intellectuals, the essay was his characteristic form, accommodating his multifarious interests and expressing his protean, searching, exuberant mind. This collection includes early essays from and on the radical '60s, on New York City, on literary figures from Kafka to Pamuk, and late essays on rock, hip hop, and gentrification. Concluding with his last essay, completed just before his death in 2013, this book is Berman's intellectual autobiography, tracing his career as a thinker through the way he read the signs in the street.

Biografía del autor

Marshall Berman (1940-2013) nació en Nueva York y estudió en las universidades de Columbia, Oxford y Harvard. Desde finales de los años sesenta enseñó teoría política y urbanismo en la City University de Nueva York (CUNY). Es autor, entre otras, de 'Todo lo sólido se desvanece en el aire. La experiencia de la modernidad' (Siglo XXI de España Editores, 1988) y de Aventuras marxistas' (Siglo XXI de España Editores, 2002, edición que incluye a su vez el celebérrimo artículo 'Todo lo sólido...', que daba título a su anterior libro), así como de The Politics of Authenticity. Radical Individualism and the Emergence of Modern Society' (1970 y 2009). Destacado pensador marxista, sus trabajos sobre economía, arte y cultura fueron moldeados por su inmersión temprana en la obra de Karl Marx.