One of the central themes of this book [is] the fate of "all that is solid" in modern life to "melt into air." The innate dynamism of the modern economy, and of the culture that grows from this economy, annihilates everything that it creates -- physical environments, social institutions, metaphysical ideas, artistic visions, moral values -- in order to create more, to go on endlessly creating the world anew. This drive draws all modern men and women into its orbit, and forces us all to grapple with the question of what is essential, what is meaningful, what is real in the maelstrom in which we move and live.- Marshall Berman
from All That Is Solid Melts Into Air: The Experience of Modernity (1982)
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