Review: All That Is Solid Melts Into Air
Editorial Review - Kirkus ReviewsHappily, City College political theorist Berman (Politics of Authenticity) doesn't try to get any closer to a definition of that nebulous concept ""modernity"" than his title: it's the experience of flux that constitutes modernity for him and that he conveys here in a series of rousing essays--on Goethe's Faust, on Marx, Baudelaire, St. Petersburg, and New York. . . and the contradictory elements of the modern experience they embody. For Berman, Faust is not the creator of his own destruction but the man who is alive only in the interplay between creation and destruction--the developer who acknowledges the cost of creating and re-creating the world. The advocates of ""small is beautiful"" misread the Faustian bargain, Berman avers, as if growth led to destruction; rather, the enormous change entailed in the idea of limited growth is a Faustian enterprise and a challenge worthy of modernism. Marx is the source of Berman's title (the words are from the ""Communist Manifesto"") and much of his stimulus; but where Marx attributes the modern upheaval to capitalism's dynamic character, Berman sees much more implicated than a single economic system. And where Marx foresees the restoration of stability and a fixed moral framework upon the transition from capitalism to communism, in Berman's estimation there is no going back to premodernism (which is what post-modernism would be), only the topsyturvy moral universe we have thrust ourselves into. The two succeeding sections parallel the Paris of Baudelaire's flaneur and the St. Petersburg of Dostoevski, Gogol, Biely, and Mandelstam--a city of modern Europe and a city thrust into modernity through backwardness. The last and unsurpassed section is set in Berman's native Bronx: he recalls his own experience of change, ushered in by Robert Moses' construction of the Cross-Bronx Expressway. But instead of taking Charlotte St. as a symbol of the destruction wrought by Moses, he confides ""my Bronx modernist dream: The Bronx Mural""--to be painted on the brick walls lining the expressway and to depict, in modernist styles, the ""ghosts"" of the Bronx; from John Garfield to George Meany, Jonas Salk to Stokely Carmichael. Berman closes with an evocation of the new cultural life of the Bronx: a sculpture, ""Puerto Rican Sun,"" that represents for him the constant effort to make ourselves at home in a world of change. Not all will want to make their peace with this vision of modernity, but the vision is worth seeing in Berman's graphic, invigorating description.
Review: All That Is Solid Melts into Air: The Experience of Modernity
User Review - Keaton Smith - GoodreadsThis is a good book. Its pithy but berman writes simply and to the point. He is very resourceful and throws in tid bits of reference that are fun to catch. Even though some references are more buried ... Read full review
Review: All That Is Solid Melts into Air: The Experience of Modernity
User Review - Jocelyn Koehler - GoodreadsOn my "currently reading" shelf because I've never actually finished it. But I love to dip in and try to muddle through a few pages at a time. Always tips my brain in a new direction... Read full review
Review: All That Is Solid Melts into Air: The Experience of Modernity
User Review - Megan - GoodreadsI found Berman's analysis to be lacking in the rigor necessary for this type of project to really turn out well. The culling of literary texts and historical moments for archetypes of the experience ... Read full review
Review: All That Is Solid Melts into Air: The Experience of Modernity
User Review - FX Altomare - GoodreadsAn excellent overview of modernity, written in an accessible style with copious references to a range of works from literature, architecture, philosophy, economics, and more. The major flaw, however ... Read full review
Review: All That Is Solid Melts into Air: The Experience of Modernity
User Review - Bethany - GoodreadsI'm definitely biased in my review of this book so I won't say much. Basically it was just an ode to communism and modernity and it went against everything I believe in. It contributed nothing to my ... Read full review
Review: All That Is Solid Melts into Air: The Experience of Modernity
User Review - Cole Stratton - GoodreadsThis is a difficult book to review because of how broad and complex Berman's subject matter is. His exploration of the feeling of modernity is poetic, academic, boring and enthralling. He is ... Read full review
Review: All That Is Solid Melts into Air: The Experience of Modernity
User Review - BeeQuiet - GoodreadsThis book has completely shifted my thinking on modernity whilst being a joy to read. Passion oozes from the pages. I'd write more, but I don't think I could do it justice. If you're in any way interested in the concepts of modernity or postmodernity, read this book. Read full review
Review: All That Is Solid Melts into Air: The Experience of Modernity
User Review - Venus - Goodreadsto be modern is to live a life of paradox and contradiction.it is to be overpowered by the immense bureaucratic organizations it sat have the power to control and often to destroy all communities ... Read full review
Review: All That Is Solid Melts into Air: The Experience of Modernity
User Review - Perrystroika - GoodreadsI love this book. it's sloppy, unsystematic and repetitive. it also got me to read Goethe, Pushkin, Biely, Gogol, Jane Jacobs and Robert Caro and in that sense it does what criticism should do, it transmits passion. Read full review
