Marshall Berman

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Marshall Howard Berman (born November 24, 1940 in South Bronx , † September 11, 2013 in the Upper West Side ) was an American author . He taught political science and urban studies at the City College of New York and is known for his contributions to Marxist humanism .

Biographical

Berman was born in the South Bronx . His parents jointly ran Betmar Tag & Label Co - a medium-sized textile company. He went to the Bronx High School of Science and took courses in history at Columbia University . In the local peace movement for the Vietnam War he became politicized and took part in demonstrations by the Students for a Democratic Society . He wrote his bachelor thesis in literary studies with Isaiah Berlin on the Marxist concept of freedom and individualism. GA Cohen and Bertell Ollman also belonged to his environment at the time . He wrote his dissertation on Rousseau and Montesquieu at Harvard in 1967 . He later expanded the dissertations into his first book The Politics of Authenticity (1970). Berman began his first and lifelong only academic career as a professor of political science and urban studies at the City College of New York .

Berman's five year old son Marc died in 1980, when his mother with the child in her arms while intoxicated from the window of her apartment on West End Avenue crashed (she survived). His main work All That is Solid Melts into Air is dedicated to his son. During the 1980s, Marshall Berman had an abscess in his brain that had to be removed, which left visible features on his forehead. He has since suffered from convulsions and sleep apnea . Berman read the Bible a lot and as an agnostic frequented the Ansche Chesed Synagogue in Manhattan. He died on September 11, 2013 at St. Luke's-Roosevelt Hospital Center of complications from a heart attack .

Works

Berman was the editor of Dissent and was a regular contributor to The Nation , The New York Times Book Review , the Bennington Review , the New Left Review , New Politics, and the Village Voice Literary Supplement .

Monographs
  • The Politics of Authenticity: Radical Individualism and the Emergence of Modern Society (1970) Reissued 2009 by Verso Press
  • All That Is Solid Melts Into Air: The Experience of Modernity (1982)
  • Adventures in Marxism (1999)
  • On the Town: One Hundred Years of Spectacle in Times Square (2006)
  • New York Calling: From Blackout to Bloomberg (2007), edited by Marshall Berman and Brian Berger.
  • Introduction to The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx, Penguin Books 2010

Berman has appeared in the following documentaries:

  • 1999: New York: A Documentary Film. ( Excerpt )
  • 1888: The American Experience.
  • 2010: Rubble Kings

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Berman, Marshall
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Berman, Marshall Howard (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American philosopher and author
DATE OF BIRTH November 24, 1940
PLACE OF BIRTH South bronx
DATE OF DEATH 11th September 2013
Place of death Upper West Side