all that is solid melts into air : the experience of modernity

a book that makes so much sense in todays desperately shanghaiing mumbai.. an exploration into the meanings of modern life and the dialectic between the violent thrusts towards modernization and the urges of modernity; the book traces these forces in the work of goethe, marx, baudelaire; in the literature from the strange surreal city of st petersburg and in the devastating urban renewal projects of robert moses in new york. through it all marshall berman makes a case for celebrating the internal contradiction of the modern self and its power to resist and re-imagine itself through performance in the classic public realm: the street.