Berman M. All That Is Solid Melts Into Air: The Experience of Modernity

Penguin Books, 1988. — 383 p.This book develops the idea that modernity's defining characteristic is that of continual reassertion of ambivalence. In light of this argument the author revisits writers such as Goethe, Marx and Dostoevsky adding new dimensions to them all as well as to our understanding of modernity.
From author: "In All That Is Solid Melts Into Air, I define modernism as any attempt by modern men and women to become subjects as well as objects of modernization, to get a grip on the modern world and make them­selves at home in it. This is a broader and more inclusive idea of modernism than those generally found in scholarly books. It implies an open and expansive way of understanding culture; very different from the curatorial approach that breaks up human activity into fragments and locks the fragments into separate cases, labeled by time, place, language, genre and academic discipline."Introduction: Modernity — Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow.
Goethe's Faust: The Tragedy of Development.
All That Is Solid Melts Into Air: Marx, Modernism and Modernization.
Baudelaire: Modernism in the Streets.
Petersburg: The Modernism of Underdevelopment.
In the Forest of Symbols: Some Notes on Modernism in New York.