It is very welcoming indeed to see the publishing again of Marshall Berman's seminal work on modernity, 'All that is solid melts into air.' Berman spent ten years writing his defining work - a treatise on the multifold aspects of modernism and modernity, specifically, but not entirely, concerning itself with the social and economic conflicts created by it. As Berman asserts in his introduction, 'to be modern is to live a life of paradox and contradiction.' That he attempts to illustrate and demonstrate these through interpretive literary devices - examining Marx and Marx's writings, for instance, to illustrate the inherently self-destructive nature of modernism - without self-aggrandizement, gives the book one of its many accomplishments. It is, quite simply, unique. Verso are to be congratulated for this re-issue.
'Preservation Institute
doxiadis.org
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