Marshall Berman was born in New York City on November 24, 1940, and spent his childhood in Tremont, then a predominately Jewish neighborhood of the South Bronx. His parents Betty and Murray Berman owned the Betmar Tag and Label Company. His father died of a heart attack at age 48 in the autumn of 1955, shortly after the family had moved to the Kingsbridge neighborhood of the Bronx. Berman attended the Bronx High School of Science, and was an alumnus of Columbia University, Bachelor of Letters from the University of Oxford where he was a student of Sir Isaiah Berlin. Berman completed his Doctor of Philosophy degree at Harvard University in 1968. He began working at City College in 1968 where he taught until his death. He was on the editorial board of Dissent and a regular contributor to The Nation, The New York Times Book Review, Bennington Review, New Left Review, New Politics and the Voice Literary Supplement. In Adventures in Marxism, Berman tells of how, while a Columbia University student in 1959, the chance discovery of Karl Marx's Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 proved a revelation and inspiration, and became the foundation for all his future work. This personal tone pervades his work, linking historical trends with individual observations and inflections from a particular situation. Berman is best known for his book All That Is Solid Melts into Air. Some of his other books include The Politics of Authenticity, Adventures in Marxism, On the Town: A Hundred Years of Spectacle in Times Square. His final publication was the "Introduction" to the Penguin Classics edition of The Communist Manifesto. Also in the 2000s, Berman co-edited an anthology, New York Calling: From Blackout To Bloomberg, for which he wrote the introductory essay. Berman also was a participant in Ric Burns' landmark eight-part documentary titled . He died on September 11, 2013, of a heart attack. According to friend and fellow author Todd Gitlin, Berman suffered the heart attack while eating at one of his favorite Upper West Side diners, the Metro Diner.
During the mid- to late 20th century, philosophical discourse focused on issues of modernity and the cultural attitudes and philosophies towards the modern condition. Berman put forward his own definition of modernism to counter postmodern philosophies. Berman's view of modernism is at odds with postmodernism. Paraphrasing Charles Baudelaire, Michel Foucault defined the attitude of modernity as "the ironic heroization of the present." Berman viewed postmodernism as a soulless and hopeless echo chamber. He addressed this specifically in his Preface to the 1988 reprint of All That Is Solid Melts Into Air: Berman's view of modernism also conflicts with anti-modernism according to critic George Scialabba, who is persuaded by Berman's critique of postmodernism but finds the challenge posed by the anti-modernists to be more problematic. Scialabba admires Berman's stance as a writer and thinker, calling him "earnest and a democrat", and capable of withstanding the anti-modernist challenge as it has been posed by the likes of Christopher Lasch and Jackson Lears. But Scialabba also believes that Berman "never fully faces up to the possibility of nihilism."
