Morris Berman


Morris Berman is an American historian and social critic. He earned a BA in mathematics at Cornell University in 1966 and a PhD in the history of science at The Johns Hopkins University in 1971. As an academic humanist cultural critic, Berman specializes in Western cultural and intellectual history.

Life and work

Berman has served on the faculties of a number of universities in the U.S., Canada, and Europe. Berman emigrated from the U.S. to Mexico in 2006, where he was a visiting professor at the Tecnologico de Monterrey in Mexico City from 2008 to 2009. During this period he continued writing for various publications including Parteaguas, a quarterly magazine.
Although an academic, Berman has written several books for a general audience. They deal with the state of Western civilization and with an ethical, historically responsible, or enlightened approach to living within it. His work emphasizes the legacies of the European Enlightenment and the historical place of present-day American culture.
As book reviewer George Scialabba points out, Berman's work is generally discussed in terms of the two trilogies he produced over a thirty-year span :

Recognition

In 1990, Morris Berman received the Governor's Writers Award for his book Coming to Our Senses. In 1992, he was the recipient of the first annual Rollo May Center Grant for Humanistic Studies. In 2000, Berman's book The Twilight of American Culture was named one of the ten most recommended books of the year by the Christian Science Monitor and was named a "Notable Book" by The New York Times Book Review. In 2013 he received the "Neil Postman Award for Career Achievement in Public Intellectual Activity" from the Media Ecology Association. Berman continues to live in Mexico.

Selected works