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Essays tracing the intellectual life of a quintessential New York City writer and thinker
MARSHALL BERMAN was Distinguished Professor of Political Science at City College of New York and CCNY Graduate Center, where he taught political theory and urban studies and is the author of The Politics of Authenticity, All That Is Solid Melts into Air; and On the Town.
Marshall Berman was our Manhattan Socrates: not the arch
dialectician but the philosopher in and of the street, not the
aggressive asker of questions but the ambler in the boulevard, the
man who seeks wisdom in the agora, in the conversation of Times
Square, the walker in the city, the man who died among friends.
*Corey Robin, author of The Reactionary Mind*
Marshall resurrected the old medieval maxim Stadtluft macht frei:
the air of the city makes us free. He found that freedom everywhere
in the busy streets of Manhattan: in the clubs and cafes of
Greenwich Village; in the gaudy lights of Times Square; in the
Bronx where he grew up, which died and was reborn; in the graffiti
scrawled on New York's subway cars; and in the music of the city,
from jazz to Broadway to rap.
*Michael Walzer, Editor Emeritus of Dissent*
The departed bard of modernism ... He believed dialogue to be an
urgent need in modern times because our subjectivity and inwardness
have intensified, a state he called both richer and more
lonely.
*Brooke Gladstone, cohost of NPR’s On the Media*
For Marshall, the bad things are always there. The contradictions
are always there. The nub of his genius is how he breaks on through
to the synthesis at the end of the tunnel.
*Robert Christgau, author of Going Into the City*
There are other writers as intelligent as Marshall Berman, and as
able to draw together disparate elements of cultural history into a
dazzling new picture, but they seldom sustain the same sense of
compassionate warmth toward those who make history.
*Rebecca Solnit, author of Nonstop Metropolis*
Modernism in the Streets captures both the violent dislocation
wrought by political changes and the artistic outputs born out of
suffering. Berman's essays make the reader experience historical
change as he did-as something urgent, frightening, but also
wondrous. With that feeling comes a faint but undeniable hint of
possibility.
*The New Republic*
A wonderful collection of Marshall's 'life and times in essays,' a
treasure trove of five decades' living and writing for the city,
lovingly consecrated by Dissent and Nation editor David Marcus, all
done with the blessing of Marshall's widow, Shellie. At last those
books-in-progress have been consummated as an organic whole; the
incomplete has been posthumously assembled in One Bright Book of
Marshall's Life...Modernism in the Streets makes Marshall whole
again, keeps him living, and gives us a new beginning, a
genesis.
*Jacobin*
Berman's writing is scholarly but jargon-free, anchored in modern
references but with a strong sense of history, and animated by a
generous sympathy. He represents what's best in the Marxist
tradition.
*Christopher Hitchens*
Marshall Berman is one of our liveliest and most generous
interpreters of Marx...brimming with ideas and romance. He can help
us learn to create ourselves while we try to change the world.
*Nation*
We must admire Marshall Berman's audacity...Berman persuasively
argues that Marx's theory of alienation can best explain the awful
consequences of capitalism, even when workers toil at computers
rather than assembly lines.
*New York Times*
It is the broadness and scale of Berman's vision of modernity that
is the power of this collection.
*Jacobin*
Modernism in the Streets is a comprehensive testament to singular
style with which Berman espoused, with equal urgency and
earnestness, the tragedies and triumphs of modernity, and its
continuing impact on the ways we navigate urban space.
*The Culture Trip*
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