Marshall Berman, Marxist-humanist author and educator, dead at 72

NEW YORK, N.Y. – Marshall Berman, an author, philosopher and educator whose humanist writings on economics, art and culture were shaped by his early and lasting immersion in the works of Karl Marx, has died. He was 72.

Friend and fellow author Todd Gitlin says Berman died Wednesday of a heart attack.

Berman was on the editorial board of the leftist magazine Dissent and was a contributor to The New York Times, The Nation and many other publications. His best known book was “All That is Solid Melts Into Air,” a history of modernism in which he passionately critiqued everything from Goethe’s “Faust” to Jones Beach.

A native and longtime resident of New York City, he was a professor of political science at the City College of New York.