Marshall Berman: All That Is Solid Melts Into Air: The Experience of Modernity (1982–) [EN, ES]

The political and social revolutions of the nineteenth century, the pivotal writings of Goethe, Marx, Dostoevsky, and others, and the creation of new environments to replace the old-all have thrust us into a modern world of contradictions and ambiguities. In this fascinating book, Marshall Berman examines the clash of classes, histories, and cultures, and ponders our prospects for coming to terms with the relationship between a liberating social and philosophical idealism and a complex, bureaucratic materialism.From a reinterpretation of Karl Marx to an incisive consideration of the impact of Robert Moses on modern urban living, Berman charts the progress of the twentieth-century experience. He concludes that adaptation to continual flux is possible and that therein lies our hope for achieving a truly modern society.

First published by Simon & Schuster, Inc., 1982
This edition with a new preface published in Penguin Books, 1988
ISBN 0140109625, 9780140109627
383 pages

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All That Is Solid Melts Into Air: The Experience of Modernity (English, 1982/1988)
Todo lo solido se desvanece en el aire: La experiencia de la modernidad (Spanish, trans. Andrea Morales Vidal, 3rd ed., 1988/1989, added on 2014-6-2)

Rem Koolhaas: Delirious New York: A Retroactive Manifesto for Manhattan (1978/1994)

Since its original publication in 1978, Delirious New York has attained mythic status. Back in print in a newly designed edition, this influential cultural, architectural, and social history of New York is even more popular, selling out its first printing on publication. Rem Koolhaas’s celebration and analysis of New York depicts the city as a metaphor for the incredible variety of human behavior. At the end of the nineteenth century, population, information, and technology explosions made Manhattan a laboratory for the invention and testing of a metropolitan lifestyle — “the culture of congestion” — and its architecture.

“Manhattan,” he writes, “is the 20th century’s Rosetta Stone … occupied by architectural mutations (Central Park, the Skyscraper), utopian fragments (Rockefeller Center, the U.N. Building), and irrational phenomena (Radio City Music Hall).” Koolhaas interprets and reinterprets the dynamic relationship between architecture and culture in a number of telling episodes of New York’s history, including the imposition of the Manhattan grid, the creation of Coney Island, and the development of the skyscraper. Delirious New York is also packed with intriguing and fun facts and illustrated with witty watercolors and quirky archival drawings, photographs, postcards, and maps. The spirit of this visionary investigation of Manhattan equals the energy of the city itself.

Originally published by Thames & Hudson, 1978
Publisher Monacelli Press, 1994
ISBN 1885254008, 9781885254009
317 pages

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Le Corbusier: When the Cathedrals Were White: A Journey to the Country of Timid People (1937–) [EN, ES]

“In his brilliant and incisive style, Le Corbusier examines the architecture and people of New York. He loves the people but finds the architecture haphazard and in need of planning. Through provocative prose and revealing drawings, he proposes a new, beautiful, vertical New York.” (from the back cover)

First published in French as Quand les cathédrales étaient blanches. Voyage au pays des timides, Plon, Paris, 1937.

English edition
Translated by Francis E. Hyslop, Jr.
First published by Reynal & Hitchcock, 1947
Publisher McGraw-Hill Paperbacks, 1964
243 pages

Review (Gaither Stewart, Southern Cross Review, 2003)

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When the Cathedrals Were White (English, trans. Francis E. Hyslop, Jr., 1947/1964)
Cuando las catedrales eran blancas (Spanish, trans. Julio E. Payró, 2nd ed., 1948/1958)