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Books : History : Europe : Central Europe
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For more than six centuries, the strange and defiant Habsburg family ruled a polyglot empire sprawling from Austria to the Adriatic Sea, from North Africa to Mexico. Wheatcroft examines what distinguished this powerful, idiosyncratic, nationally fragmented clan from the other ruling houses of Europe, showing how the dynasty's mythical vision and unsurpassed political acumen culminated in a culture which produced 20th-century giants, from Freud to Hitler. Illustrations.
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Thunder at Twilight is a landmark of historical vision, drawing on hitherto untapped sources to illuminate two crucial years in the life of the extraordinary city of Vienna—and in the life of the twentieth century. It was during the carnival of 1913 that a young Stalin arrived on a mission that would launch him into the upper echelon of Russian revolutionaries, and it was here that he first collided with Trotsky. It was in Vienna that the failed artist Adolf Hitler kept daubing watercolors and spouting tirades at fellow drifters in a flophouse. Here Archduke Franz Ferdinand had a troubled audience with Emperor Franz Joseph—and soon the bullet that killed the archduke would set off the Great War that would kill ten million more. With luminous prose that has twice made him a finalist for the National Book Award, Frederic Morton evokes the opulent, elegant, incomparable sunset metropolis—Vienna on the brink of cataclysm.
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“Reads like a novel. A fast-paced page-turner, it has everything: sex, wit, humor, and adventures. But it is an impressively researched and important story.”
—David Fromkin, author of Europe’s Last Summer
Vienna, 1814 is an evocative and brilliantly researched account of the most audacious and extravagant peace conference in modern European history. With the feared Napoleon Bonaparte presumably defeated and exiled to the small island of Elba, heads of some 216 states gathered in Vienna to begin piecing together the ruins of his toppled empire. Major questions loomed: What would be done with France? How were the newly liberated territories to be divided? What type of restitution would be offered to families of the deceased? But this unprecedented gathering of kings, dignitaries, and diplomatic leaders unfurled a seemingly endless stream of personal vendettas, long-simmering feuds, and romantic entanglements that threatened to undermine the crucial work at hand, even as their hard-fought policy decisions shaped the destiny of Europe and led to the longest sustained peace the continent would ever see.
Beyond the diplomatic wrangling, however, the Congress of Vienna served as a backdrop for the most spectacular Vanity Fair of its time. Highlighted by such celebrated figures as the elegant but incredibly vain Prince Metternich of Austria, the unflappable and devious Prince Talleyrand of France, and the volatile Tsar Alexander of Russia, as well as appearances by Ludwig van Beethoven and Emilia Bigottini, the sheer star power of the Vienna congress outshone nearly everything else in the public eye.
An early incarnation of the cult of celebrity, the congress devolved into a series of debauched parties that continually delayed the progress of peace, until word arrived that Napoleon had escaped, abruptly halting the revelry and shrouding the continent in panic once again.
Vienna, 1814 beautifully illuminates the intricate social and political intrigue of this history-defining congress–a glorified party that seemingly valued frivolity over substance but nonetheless managed to drastically reconfigure Europe’s balance of power and usher in the modern age.
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"Lukacs's book is a lyrical, sometimes dazzling, never merely nostalgic evocation of a glorious period in the city's history. . . . {His} true sympathy lies . . . not with the famous expatriates, but with the writers and intellectuals who lived and died at home: the poets Endre Ady and Mihaly Babits; the novelists Ferenc Herczeg, Sandor Hunyady, Frigyes Karinthy, Dezso Kosztolanyi, Gyula Krudy, Kalman Mikszath, and Zsigmond Moricz; the political essayist DezsoSzabo; the playwright Erno Szep; the literary historian Antal Szerb; and others. . . . {John Lukacs} sets out to explain Hungarian literature to English-speaking readers. Though I have no idea whether or not he will succeed, few interpreters of Hungarian literature have made a more touching and eloquent attempt." -- The New York Review of Books
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Slovakia's declaration of independence in January 1993 marked the reemergence of a state about which remarkably little is known. Slovakia has struggled throughout most of its history to establish a separate identity, from the time of the Great Moravian Empire in which St. Cyril and St. Methodius initiated the Christianization of the Slavs, to its rule first by the Hungarians and then by the Czechs. When the first Slovak Republic emerged in 1939, Europe was on the brink of war, a fact that has colored the world's attitude to her aspirations for statehood thereafter. Professor Kirschbaum describes the history of the Slovak nation from its arrival on the Danubian Plain and the valleys of the Tatra Mountains to its declaration of independence in 1993. The topics he examines include: the Slovak nation's contributions to European civilization in the Middle Ages; the development of a specifically Slovak consciousness in the nineteenth century in response to Budapest's policy of Magyarization; its struggle for autonomy in the Czech-dominated Czechoslovakia created by the Treaty of Versailles; its efforts, as the Slovak Republic, to face the problems of a Nazi-controlled Europe; and its reaction to the Communist regime in the second half of the twentieth century. The final chapter examines the debate about the future of Slovakia and the events that led to its independence after the fall of Communism in Central Europe.
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A dramatic account of life in Czechoslovakia’s great capital during the Nazi Protectorate With this successor book to Prague in Black and Gold, his account of more than a thousand years of Central European history, the great scholar Peter Demetz focuses on just six short years—a tormented, tragic, and unforgettable time. He was living in Prague then—a “first-degree half-Jew,” according to the Nazis’ terrible categories—and here he joins his objective chronicle of the city under German occupation with his personal memories of that period: from the bitter morning of March 15, 1939, when Hitler arrived from Berlin to set his seal on the Nazi takeover of the Czechoslovak government, until the liberation of Bohemia in April 1945, after long seasons of unimaginable suffering and pain. Demetz expertly interweaves a superb account of the German authorities’ diplomatic, financial, and military machinations with a brilliant description of Prague’s evolving resistance and underground opposition. Along with his private experiences, he offers the heretofore untold history of an effervescent, unstoppable Prague whose urbane heart went on beating despite the deportations, murders, cruelties, and violence: a Prague that kept its German- and Czech-language theaters open, its fabled film studios functioning, its young people in school and at work, and its newspapers on press. This complex, continually surprising book is filled with rare human detail and warmth, the gripping story of a great city meeting the dual challenge of occupation and of war.
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Spanning twenty-five years, this historic collection of writings shows Vaclav Havel's evolution from a modestly known playwright who had the courage to advise and criticize Czechoslovakia's leaders to a newly elected president whose first address to his fellow citizens begins, "I assume you did not propose me for this office so that I, too, would lie to you." Some of the pieces in Open Letters, such as "Dear Dr. Husak" and the essay "The Power of the Powerless," are by now almost legendary for their influence on a generation of Eastern European dissidents; others, such as some of Havel's prison correspondence and his private letter to Alexander Dubcek, appear in English for the first time. All of them bear the unmistakable imprint of Havel's intellectual rigor, moral conviction, and unassuming eloquence, while standing as important additions to the world's literature of conscience.
From the Trade Paperback edition.
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A cradle-to-the-grave of one of the most intriguing rulers in history, King Frederick the Great who raised the small kingdom of Prussia to major power status in the turbulent military and political struggles of the 18th century. A cruel childhood forced him to lie, deceive and cheat in order to enjoy, if only for brief periods, the life of an intellectual. Once on the throne he spent many years of often brilliant field command of his army in seemingly endless campaigns. He remained an intellectual, however, an essayist, historian, poet, flautist, consorting when possible with the French writer Voltaire.
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A critically lauded, stimulating, and well-informed history of modern Austria makes use of the Habsburg's private family archives to trace the role of Austria in Europe's history since the Reformation and Austrians' identity as a people.
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Reed S. Browning explores the often-changing war aims of the major belligerents-Austria, France, Great Britain, Prussia, Piedmont-Sardinia, and Spain-and links diplomatic and military events to the political and social context from which they arose.
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Immortalized in "The Sound of Music", the Von Trapp Family fled Hitler-invaded Austria to start new lives in America as the Trapp Family Singers. Their dramatic story is updated with information about the Trapp Family Lodge in Stowe, Vermont, where the singers conduct music camps and plan their world concert tours.
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This historical survey of Central Europe covers a region that encompasses contemporary Germany, Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Austria, Hungary, Slovenia, and Croatia. Now in its second edition, Central Europe: Enemies, Neighbors, Friends contains a new epilogue-updated to cover events since 1995-and several redesigned or updated maps. Each chapter is thematically organized around issues or events that are important in helping students develop an understanding of the region's internal dynamics. Johnson illuminates the competing religious, cultural, economic, national, and ideological interests that have driven the history of Central Europe. Thorough, objective, and focused, Johnson's work stands out as both a useful core text covering an area of growing interest and a brilliant account of a region that is only just beginning to receive the attention it deserves.
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An intimate history of Czechoslovakia under communism; a meditation on the social and political role of art, and a triumphant statement of the values underlying all the recent revolutions in Central and Eastern Europe.
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Since their unexplained appearance in Europe over nine centuries ago, the Gypsies have refused to fall in with conventional settled life. They remain a people whose culture and customs are beset with misunderstanding, and who cling to their distinct identity in the teeth of persistent rejection and pressure to conform. This book describes their history.
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On October 23, 1956, a popular uprising against Soviet rule swept through Hungary like a force of nature, only to be mercilessly crushed by Soviet tanks twelve days later. Only now, fifty years after those harrowing events, can the full story be told. This book is a powerful eyewitness account and a gripping history of the uprising in Hungary that heralded the future liberation of Eastern Europe.
Paul Lendvai was a young journalist covering politics in Hungary when the uprising broke out. He knew the government officials and revolutionaries involved. He was on the front lines of the student protests and the bloody street fights and he saw the revolutionary government smashed by the Red Army. In this riveting, deeply personal, and often irreverent book, Lendvai weaves his own experiences with in-depth reportage to unravel the complex chain of events leading up to and including the uprising, its brutal suppression, and its far-reaching political repercussions in Hungary and neighboring Eastern Bloc countries. He draws upon exclusive interviews with Russian and former KGB officials, survivors of the Soviet backlash, and relatives of those executed. He reveals new evidence from closed tribunals and documents kept secret in Soviet and Hungarian archives. Lendvai's breathtaking narrative shows how the uprising, while tragic, delivered a stunning blow to Communism that helped to ultimately bring about its demise.
One Day That Shook the Communist World is the best account of these unprecedented events.
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Using evidence gathered in Europe and the United States, Evan Bukey crafts a nuanced portrait of popular opinion in Austria, Hitler's homeland, after the country was annexed by Germany in 1938. He demonstrates that despite widespread dissent, discontent, and noncompliance, a majority of the Austrian populace supported the Anschluss regime--particularly in its economic, social, and anti-Semitic policies--until the bitter end."
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The multi-national Habsburg empire has never lost its fascination since its fall in 1918. Robin Okey's book shows how the Habsburg peoples experienced the same social, economi, and political processes as most other Europeans, in ways that cast interesting light on these processes from both the European and the Habsburg angle. Opposing views that the national problem was therefore subordinate to underlying socio-economic backwardness, Okey argues for the inextricable entanglement of the two themes, as nationalism emerged from a process of social mobilization which threatened the position of dominant Austro-Germans and Magyars. Robin Okey brings a distinctive approach to an intriguing subject, in a comprehensive study based on wide reading in most of the Monarchy's languages.