Austria Books

Liptak is a Hungarian nationalist as well as a U.S. citizen. He describes how he became one of the univerisity rebels during the Hungarian Revolution and the personal consuquences of his decision. He lost his country, his love, and his family relationships as a result of his decision to take part in the Technical University's rebel groups.

This revolt eventually encompassed the entire Hungarian nation as citizens rose up to oust the communist regime and replace it with true patriots. This was done to the Russian occupier's dismay. The fighting in the streets between the Hungarian secret service and the Russian occupiers caused much damage to the capital Budapest.

This is a nice book about the Revolution. I see that Liptak is a Hungarian nationalist and still thinks that parts of Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, and Austria should again belong to a greater Hungarian nation. Despite this, this is a good account of the two week Hungarian Revolution.

If within the US a working class person could easily find a number of perspectives on this event, I would say this is not a bad contribution to the panorama of views one could read on the topic. Unfortunately, if one goes to the local bookstore and/or library, this sort of text is the only type of thing one can find on the events in Hungary of 1956. Only one perspective on this event is allowed, not even one book sympathetic to Kadar is allowed among the multitude condemning him, the AVH and the USSR, all must condemn them - but remember, they're the ones with a party line and commissars, not us.

This person is honest about his background - his family is so well-connected that despite having problems because of that background, he is able to pull strings to get into the local university. At that university he leaps to fight against the political changes going on in the country as soon as he can. What does he say he wants? That the landlords regain their rights to extract rents from tenants they used to collect from, that business owners regain the right to extract profits from their workers and so forth. He also wants to pull out of the Warsaw Pact. He says he's willing to compromise with the workers if they don't want to return the large-scale enterprises, he thinks they should be privatized, but would accept worker management if necessary. All of this shows how he considers the workers alien to someone from his background, the kind of class difference that led the Hungarian workers to have a soviet revolution far before (1919) the Red Army pushed the Nazis out.

The reader may wonder why he is reading an account from someone as ritzy as this - what did the average working class Hungarian think of what's going on? Well, don't expect to find out at your local bookstore or library - only upper middle class fellows such as this or people like Henry Kissinger's perspectives count. These are the questions to be asked when we read accounts not by working class people like ourselves, but those of landlords, business owners, and privileged college students from families who were once well-to-do. It's telling that at the end of the Cold War his main bitterness is that the old landlords did not regain their rights to collect rents from tenants. He shows what he and many others were fighting for in 1956.

Very engaging, thoughtful and critically reflective personal story about being a major participant in the Hungarian revolution. The book is well written and moves along quickly. What I gained most from the book is an understanding of the emotions, values and personalities of the "revolutionaries." The insights provided could only be done by someone who was there and had to make the choices. And, to understand the context of those choices, the author gives us his perspective on Hungarian history.

I unfortunatly have to say that this books eyewitness accounts may be false. My gradparents took part in this revolution and know this man. He is an excellent writer i must say but sometimes uses to much falseties. Many times he puts himself in other people shoes to make a great book. I must say this is a good book but is not entirely true.

Liptak's memoir compares favorably with Sandor Kopacsi's "In the Name of the Working Class." SK explains his role as the Budapest deputy chief of police who switched sides and aided the rebels; BL offers the view from a student leader's encounters on the pavement below the offices where SK and his counterparts worked to advance the aims of 1956. While SK insists that the revolt was for a purer, worker-dominated type of communism (perhaps akin to an anarcho-syndicalist model) free of Soviet imperialism, this argument dims in BL's account. He gives the points that the students and workers distributed and proclaimed, but the whole question of how the Hungarians' new state would contrast with both the capitalist and the communist systems appears rather muddled in his narrative. Maybe such nuanced planning could not be taken in the heat of the moment, as the Hungarians struggled in a few days to drive out the Soviets.

Where it excels is in simply telling it like it was: the hunger, the generosity, the giddy sleeplessness, the state of his corduroy jacket, the grease-slicked rifle he hoists. You become so caught up in his vivid descriptions that you wonder why so little about this revolution has reached the West in easily accessible form. His footnotes add valuable details about the fate of his fellow revolutionaries and the mental framework of a "typical" young man hearing the demands of the leaders for the first time at the university conveys itself here unforgettably.

As well, the emotion of encountering liberating and opposing troops in the street, the fear of entering the AVH (secret police) headquarters and the shock of what he and his fighters find there, and the sheer amateur heroics coming up against the jolt of a Soviet muzzle at one's neck makes for an honest re-creation of what Liptak and his young fighters encountered as the counter-attacks flattened the idealistic students waiting for NATO to arrive. Liptak, to his credit, narrates all of the conflicting emotions that result once these guerrillas faced the Soviet troops--some in the latter's ranks thought that they faced the Nazis or Israelis on the Suez Canal!

Liptak clearly tells how the Suez crisis overshadowed the Hungarian revolt--and how the Hungarians believed that the West engineered it to distract the world from the revolt. Also, Liptak reminds us of Eisenhower's upcoming election, and why Ike might have wanted to avoid the issue of sending aid to Budapest as he faced re-election.

A couple of points that would have benefitted from more in-depth analysis: first, the role of the CIA in infiltrating the National Student Association and the Hungarian students assisted in their education after they fled to the US is not mentioned. As one who participated in this process, Liptak, given his smarts, either keeps silent out of loyalty or ignores the pressures faced by these students to spy for the CIA as perhaps tangential to his own story. Still, given the importance of this whole event of the 1956 rebellion in Cold War terms, Liptak's silence on this topic surprises me.

Second, the lack of comparative bibliographical references appears to weaken the wider impact of his testimony. Why does BL not mention SK's own memoirs, published about a decde earlier in North America? I'd be interested in what BL thinks about the previous work, and other first-person accounts and third-person studies of 1956 and its aftermath. He does not fit his own detailed account into any broader tradition of such narratives.

Overall, Liptak's account, in its verve and freshness, remains worthwhile reading and I recommend it as one non-fiction book that kept me up late in the night to finish it! Inevitably, all of our own individual accounts rely upon our own limits of evaluation and Liptak does present the tale at its heart as one from "Ocsi," his younger self. But the older self might have stepped into the conclusion and presented how he had changed and evolved in his historical understanding of the events which his younger self helped shape. Maybe a sequel is in order?

This book has been produced without due editorial care and attention - the index is arbitrary and incomplete, and I found many incorrect cross-references. A factual inaccuracy: Arnold Schoenberg's grave in the Zentralfriedhof is not in section 33C, but in 32C. Nor is it organised in a way that makes it particularly easy to use; in my view, the principle of organisation used in Michelin Guides is superior.

The Time Out Vienna guide made my trip much more enjoyable with it's insider tips and witty humor, even through it was published over 2 years ago.
The information in the guide was even informative to my travel partner who has been to Vienna hundred's of times over 50 years.
I will ALWAYS travel with a Time Out guide in the future.

Being Viennese and a lonely planet fan, I must clearly say, that this is "the best" travel guide for Vienna, I've ever browsed through.

Granted, information about the rich Viennese history could fill bookshelves, but this guide does not only provide a brief, but sound historical information, but also a bunch of contemporary hints.

Moreover, it tries to go a little off the beaten path, by not only focussing on the "hardcore must visit" spots. I could not have described some places/cafes/clubs better to my foreign friends than this book.

Captions are sometimes nonexistent for the photos and graphics, and often too smarmy and cute to be anything but misleading. Discussion of Vienna's museum of criminology included a shockingly gory photo of a dismembered corpse that took up 1/3 of a page: nothing I'd want to encounter again.

I threw this book away and bought the Eyewitness Travel Guide to Vienna instead: a very elegant, richly graphical, dependably tasteful series. I will never buy Time Out again!

If you only purchase on guide book to Vienna get this one.

It's very detailed and very honest. It's fun to read even if you're not going to Vienna

Highly recommended!!

Although the book is not that flattering for Arnold its not that bad either. I stopped following his career in the early 90's and it has alot of information about him since then. Most of the information about his career early on and into the 80's I already knew but had more detail than in previous material I had read.

This my may not be the best book you will ever read, but if you're interested in information about Arnold, this is not a bad choice. The author mentions all the obstacles he had in writing this book and does not try to make it seem like it is an authorized biography in any way. He does give you a look at Arnold without the childish self-promoting efforts that Arnold's autobiography seems to try. This is a fun book, with a slight edge to it like you're reading something that might have been printed in a tabloid were it not printed in a book. You can almost feel like you are sneeking around with the author trying to find out information about Arnold that is not some sort of publicity stunt. It might not be the most fair look at Arnold, but then again neither is Arnold's autobiography. I think the real story might be found somewhere in between the two books.

This author is out to make Arnold look bad, not to sure about this book...I think its a bunch of BS myself. Arnold is a true Idol, a star, a person someone wants to be. This guy makes Arnold out to be a pure bonified *%*$*@*...I do not believe the bullcrap from this book at all...

Great Book. Takes an honest look at the real life "Arnold Schwarzenegger". It may take the magic out of the man for some , but it puts a human face on one of the greatest personalities of our times. The book points out that, like all of us, Arnold has his imperfections, but through sheer will and a fanatical determination to succeed, he pulled himself up by his boot straps and propelled himself to success. An absolute "MUST READ" for all true Arnold fans.

I used to think Schwarzenegger was great... now I'm not so sure!!

This book makes you realise that he is just one big marketing ploy. You also get to see that he is not a nice person - he tramples over people to get what he wants, and makes you realise that most of the charity work he does is only to make him look like a good person...

I think this quote from the book sums him up, "I admire people like hitler..."

EEK. Will change the way you see him drastically. I preferred my blind opinion of him before!!

It is nice to have the same book cover three major cities, often on the same trip. The book is good, both for lodging and restaurants and sightseeing. Others (Lonely Planet) are a little better, however, but only deal with one city.

Maps are an important part of any guidebook, and the maps in this book are lacking. They do not include hotel locations on city maps nor Metro/bus stops. They have no key and are in a pink/white ink (like Rough Guide), making them difficult to read. In addition, it includes no information for budget travelers; no hostel information nor cheap eats (this book lists anything less than 25 Euros as a "Cheap Eat"). In addition, it does not include a list of bulleted "Must Sees;" it prefers to list sights by location, not importance. As a result, smaller, regional museums take precedence over more important sights, which may be listed in a different neighborhood. In addition, it does not list entrance fees to musuems, it simply says "Admission Charged." After two days, I stop using this book and started asking Tourist Information Offices for maps and suggested sights. This book would be good supplemental information for a tourist on a tour with a guide, but very poor for independent travelers.

This book covers the must sees in each city. Easy to navigate. Good photographs. I always hope that a guide book will cover some of the unusual spots to visit and I'm always looking for gardens or arboreta. This was very light on these things.

We used this guide for just Budapest and Prague, not Vienna. It was usefully succinct in its description of the importance of the sights it reviewed. Also, it helped those having a limited amount of time to identify the "must see" sights and gave a quick introduction to the money, culture, etc., of the country involved. The only reason it's not 5 stars is that it failed to lay out walking routes to hit the sights it mentions, something that would have been even more useful.

One of the reasons I chose to order this book was Amazon's mention of "color photographs." There are NONE, other than the cover. In fact there are no photographs at all. The very few illustrations are maps, no better than I've seen in the other books.

Where this book seems superior to others is in the depth of its descriptions. For example, over two full pages on the Charles Bridge. Each country/city also has an introduction with several pages of history and art history.

The font is of nice quality but just a little too small. I don't want to be whipping out the reading glasses while I'm sightseeing. Also, the book is nicely divided into the three cities, so could perhaps be cut into three parts to carry around -- but the publisher chose to put the Language section (3 languages) in the back. Why not put the Czech language section at the end of the Prague section? That would also put it closer to the restaurant listing, where a language reference would be handy.

I'm going to read this thoroughly so I can better appreciate the sights, but a different book is going with me.

One of the best books written about Mozart. If it's your first biography, you couldn't choose a better one, because it flows naturally, dispenses with all the standard romantic cliches and gives new insights. If you've read fifty books on Mozart (which I have), it is essential for the same reasons. Together with last year's "Mozart's women" by Jane Glover, you have as complete a portrait of this elusive genius, my personal hero, as possible.

A fun book to read if you like classical music. The descriptions of Mozart's music are good and the way his music was received in his lifetime is very interesting. The book is a little dry but since it is a biography I assumed it would be dry. It is still an interesting read.

This is the second Wolfgang Amadé Mozart biography I have read and so far, the best!

Melograni succeeds at smootlhy taking the reader from June 1765 at a London tavern (The swan) where he interpreted at the early age of 9, to Mozart's death bed in 1791 at only 35 years of age.

If yoy saw the Milos Forman's movie "Amadeus" then you have the wrong (very wrong) picture of the life of this genious and playful character.

Chapter after chapter, his works are simply and accurately described, his family affairs "naked", his passions explained, his women revealed, etc.

You are not a "Mozartini" (as sometimes he joyfully called himself) connossieur until you read this book... so, put your records on, download volume and enjoy the reading!

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: A Biography by Piero Melograni is a wonderful book! Not only am I learning things about Mozart that I didn't know, I am also learning more about music in his lifetime. It also greatly covers Mozart's relationship with his father & why it became strained. Other biographies have barely touched the surface. I got this book to write a report for my music appretiation class & it has been very helpful and enlightening.

I quite enjoyed this book when looking at it strictly from an informational standpoint and in terms of satisfying my curiosity.

I must admit though that the book was somewhat dry. I feel as though this may be an example where an otherwise great book gets "lost in translation".

You will learn an awful lot about Mozart, but in my opinion, it may take you a bit longer than expected and you may drift at times, despite the fascinating details held within.

This Men at Arms series has been a huge help with my short story writing - mostly because I'm a visual person and the illustrations within are fantastic. My only complaint is how impersonal these books are - I wish there were more about the soldiers themselves (i.e. letters home, heroic stories, etc). The book sort of dehumanizes Austrian soldiers by solely discussing their tactics and weaponry. It needs more personality...

Is short but does go over the general state of equipment of the Astro-Hungarian military at the end of the war, particularly the uniforms.

Dr Peter Jung, late of the Austrian War Archives, completed his second volume for Osprey on the Austro-Hungarian forces in the First World War. Together, these two volumes, while thin, shed much light on the heretofore-neglected Austro-Hungarian troops who played such a large role in the First World War.

Dr. Jung begins with an introduction concerning the new Austrian emperor and then provides a 7-page summary of major operations in 1916-1918. He then covers army reorganization in the last two years of the war, uniforms and equipment, and a 9-page section on specialist troops (storm troopers, mountain troops, searchlight troops, gas warfare, auto troops, armored cars, army aviation, naval troops, chaplains and female troops. A final section includes information on secondary fronts (the Orientkorps in Palestine and the Western front, which includes two very detailed orders of battle (AH units on Turkish fronts and AH troops on the Western Front in October 1918). The color plates consist of: Austrian senior leaders (Emperor Karl I, FM Conrad and Colonel-General Boroevic); specialist troops (dog handlers, dismounted cavalry, mountain troops); military chaplains (Catholic, Jewish, Muslim and Protestant); naval troops; storm troops; aviators; ethnic troops (Albanian, Ukrainian); and odds-and-ends troops in late 1918. While the color plates are excellent, as usual, some of the choices (such as an entire plate on chaplains) are questionable and it would have been desirable to have at least one color plate of Austrian troops in action. Finally, the author's 2-page bibliography is very detailed and should prove very useful for any readers wishing to pursue further research on this topic. The only serious omissions in both volumes are the lack of any real discussion of Austrian tactical or operational level doctrine, and the lack of any first-person accounts.

There is a great deal of specialized information about the Austro-Hungarian army in both this volume and its predecessor, making them valuable commodities for anyone interested in a better understanding of the First World War. Given the constraints of the Osprey Men-at-Arms series, Dr. Jung made a commendable effort and these two volumes should be on the bookshelf of all serious students of the Great War.

The Austro-Hungarian Forces in World War I (2) Osprey publication just touches on highlights of the kuk is well written and researched. I enjoyed the photos from the archives and from the authors collection. Nice rank, insignia as well as unit organization charts. I spent a decade in Central Europe studying militaria, visiting actual kuk WWI battle sites, studying kuk unit forces and visiting actual kuk fortifications throughout the old empire. I specialize in military aviation in the First War, I disagree on several of the dates in the very brief aviation section of the book but other then that, excellent work.

I am writing this having a) had the book for some time now, and b) in response to the previous review.

I found the book particularly informative - especially after "Armies in the Balkans 1914-18" - and, some minor details apart - a reasonable review of the Habsburg armies in the first half of the First World War. Re. the uniform plates, I agree entirely that they are excellent and well worth the purchase price of the book alone.

However, although the previous reviewer highlights the, shall we say, negative spin of apparent lack of success of the kuk armee in 1914 and 1916 and, to a lesser extent 1915, the fact remains that - with German assistance admittedly - the Habsburg armies remained in the field in fighting order until almost the last. Indeed, given that Austro-Hungarian military spending pre 1914 was by far the lowest of the Great Powers (which includes Italy I am told) and that the German Empire was the great, powerful "new kid on the block" (from, bear in mind, 1871), the Habsburg armies' ability to survive deserves recognition. Given that the brash, new, powerful German Empire was outlived by the arthritic, "ramshackle" Austro- Hungarian state (held together by the army) for a mere matter of weeks in 1918, there must be a case for some recognition. PLUS, Imperial Russia knocked out of the war in 1917 in part due to the (admittedly) supporting role played by Austria-Hungary (NB not Austro-Hungary!). This is an old army worthy of attention. I for one think Peter Jung's book is generally well balanced and look forward to part two.

Many color pictures. However the final quarter of the book is black and white. Still, this is the best book on the subject.

i admire art books that are intelligently written, present a representative and rich survey of the artist's works, and are beautifully printed. kallir's book on schiele has all this and more.

after wading through the fatuous, abstract and self absorbed writing that passes for art criticism nowadays it is deeply refreshing to encounter an author like jane kallir, who knows her stuff down to the most intricate footnoted fact but presents the main story with verve, clarity, insight and sympathy. as a portrait of the artist and as a history of art trends in prewar vienna, kallir's telling is searching and well told.

the reproductions of several dozens of schiele's major works -- paintings and drawings -- are presented full page and full color, beautifully printed: it's possible to see the texture variations of schiele's line and the nuances of his color. browsing the work is a joy in itself. however, the real adventure is the catalog raisonne, which presents smaller format black and white images of every known work by schiele's hand (and even a few forgeries). though reduced in size -- six or so works are shown on each page -- the catalog images of the drawings are large enough to be easily legible, and the breakthroughs, variations, detours and consolidations in schiele's style are a fascinating visual story in themselves.

the price is high, but the book is big and heavy, and made to very high standards, so the price is fair. i'm very picky about books, and this book impressed me a lot.

I used to go to the library for years just to look through this book (it was out of print for a while). It is a wonderful book chronicling all the works of Egon Schiele, and you get a chance to see his growth as an artist. I wish all the drawings in the catalog were printed a lot bigger than the 2"x2", but that would make the book too expensive for anyone but outright scholars because Egon Schiele was such a prolific artist. Still, the details are not completely lost and Jane Kallir is an authority on Egon Schiele's work. The Gallerie St. Ettiene is a wonderful gallery and I got the chance to see many of the drawings in this book there. To look again that the drawings in the book after seeing the real ones, one isn't really disappointed. It is wonderful to have all the works by an artist cataloged this way.

i admire art books that are intelligently written, present a representative and rich survey of the artist's works, and are beautifully printed. kallir's book on schiele has all this and more.

after wading through the fatuous, abstract and self absorbed writing that passes for art criticism nowadays it is deeply refreshing to encounter an author like jane kallir, who knows her stuff down to the most intricate footnoted fact but presents the main story with verve, clarity, insight and sympathy. as a portrait of the artist and as a history of art trends in prewar vienna, kallir's telling is searching and tightly written (kudos, too, to the editor).

the reproductions of several dozens of schiele's major works -- paintings and drawings -- are presented full page and full color, beautifully printed: it's possible to see the texture variations of schiele's line and the nuances of his color. browsing the work is a joy in itself. however, the real adventure is the catalog raisonne, which presents smaller format black and white images of every known work by schiele's hand (and even a few forgeries). though reduced in size -- six or so works are shown on each page -- the catalog images of the drawings are large enough to be easily legible, and the breakthroughs, variations, detours and consolidations in schiele's style are a fascinating visual story in themselves.

the price is high, but the book is big and heavy, and made to very high standards, so the price is fair. i'm very picky about books, and this book impressed me a lot.

As an avid fan of the works of Egon Schilee I found the complete works to be the best thing I've picked up. Like stepping out of a dream the work of Schiele captures any reader. Thisd is a must for the serious persuer or any lover of art. It is simply delicious

I want to say at the outset that the body- and character- based therapy started by Reich has changed my life and pleasure like nothing else has. I am grateful, and surely he was a genius and also courageous....

Psychotherapy is almost entirely composed of very nice people, both on the receiving end (patients) and the sending end (therapists). Sometimes it takes a not nice person like Reich to make it all effective. In character analysis terms most therapists are oral characters, and Reich was a psychopathic character (which is the one character type type Reich himself never explored!) If one reads Ilse Ollendorf's book, the difficult details of his narcissistic traits are there (double standards, jealousy, dominance, wife-beating, avoiding financial obligations, yet being generous where it would make a show etc..) even though she does tries to justify it with his genius. Sharaf though, goes to great complicated apologistic length to portray Reich as someone to whom usual standards can't apply. perhaps the usual yardsticks don't apply, but I think the usual standards of justice and fairness should apply to him. It does seem however that Reich had enough of a self-reflective process to avoid being as exploitative as his character type often is.

No other book on Reich gives so much detail. But this book does not give any clear picture of how Reich was like to spend time with. That usually indicates that those around him were blinded in some way... Oral characters often pick psychopathic characters to be Messiahs because they are then supplied with necessary aggression by proxy. That can be useful synergism if a cult does not form out of it.

I RELEASE YOU TRY TO CARRY A WIDE RANGE OF BOOKS--ISNT YOUR FAULT--BUT
THIS BOOK IS DULL, UNINFORMATIVE,AND JUST SELFINDULGENT,PLAIN WORTHLESS
,BAH----------------
TOMMAS KOEHLER

Wilhelm Reich was many things in his lifetime- a student of Freud, a political activist, a research scientist, and an inventor. His work was decades ahead of its time and is finally being rediscovered and reevaluated by the public. If, like me, you are interested in Reich and his work, you might want to check out a novel called We All Fall Down, by Brian Caldwell. it draws heavily on Reich's theories, particularly Listen Little Man and The Mass Psychology Of Facism. It's a great introduction to Reich's work and the entire novel draws heavily on his theory. It's very interesting watching an author explore his theories in a fictional setting. Well worth reading.

This has to be one of the best biographies ever written. It is certainly the best ever written about Reich. You will not be able to put it down or forget it after you've read it. The effort that went into presenting all of the aspects of Reich's life and work is staggering. That extraordinary flame of humanity, Willhelm Reich, is presented here as never before. Bravo!

I knew Myron, call me Myron, not Dr. Sharaf, a wonderful, sweet,
tiger of a man. The only person who could over shadow Myron
was Dr.Reich. Myron's biography is only as fascinating as
the man he is trying to describe. The problem we all face is how
do we stand in the shadow of Dr. Reich. Myron all biographers
face the impossible task of describing a revolutionary force
beyond its understanding. So it doesn't matter how thorough Fury on Earth
is and Myron was there with Dr. Reich it has to fail. With Dr. Reich you are dealing with a Da.Vinci of our times. His discoveries will take us a thousand years to appreciate.
Not only did Reich discover and quantify the primordial energy
he discovered how to show his patients the way to feel this energy. How to be alive and feel is a miricle that Reich gave to humanity. Only the totally confused would doubt Reich's sanity. Dr. Reich deserves our eternal debt.
Thank you Myron.

I bought this book more because my artistic interest in Egon Schiele than as an interesting fictional work. The book is well done as fiction but seems to get a significant part of the art wrong. Biographies of Schiele usually give his wife Edith a very different character. In the book, she is very proper. In most collections of his work, many of the most explicit and erotic drawings are listed as of Edith and her sister. Also,the relationship to his sister seems very much more restrained than than his work seems to indicate. Discussion of paintings and drawings without examples made me happy to have the Schroder biograpby of Schiele handy for comparison.

With one of the better, and more original, voices in contemporary fiction Joanna Scott has created a startlingly beautiful view into the artistic process. Through the lenses of several people (including his own)we get a full picture of the painter Egon Schiele and of those around him. You can taste the food, feel the paint on the canvas, and smell early twentieth-century Vienna! There are few writers today who can write with the grace and power that flows through Joanna Scott's prose. She is a writer who commands attention, and deserves to be widely read. If you enjoy art, traveling, food, or amazing writing you should read this novel. In fact, you should ingest everything that she has written, and then pass it on to others! ARROGANCE is a great place to start- it is phenomenal, it is beautiful, in short: it is a must

Egon Schiele lived a brief and turbulent artistic life, dying of influenza in 1918 at the age of twenty-eight. Schiele was a draftsman and printmaker, but was best known as a painter. He entered the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts at the tender age of sixteen and soon became a student of August Klimt, the most well known Austrian painter of that time. As one of the preeminent artists associated with Austrian expressionism, Schiele's paintings are transgressive depictions of contorted, erotically charged nude figures, often in provocative sexual poses and often including young girls. Not surprisingly, Schiele's art was controversial. Moreover, his use of adolescent girls as models for his drawings and paintings led to numerous charges of immorality. Often, this simply meant he had to move from one small Austrian town to another, hounded by the wrath of common people who viewed him as morally repugnant. However, in one case, Schiele was prosecuted and spent time in prison for his averred transgressions.

"Arrogance" is Joanna Scott's fictional account of Schiele's life, a parallax narrative that tells its tale from a series of changing and different perspectives. Nominated for the 1991 PEN/Faulkner Award (which, regrettably, it did not win), it subsequently earned Scott a MacArthur Fellowship for her presumed literary genius. While not a novel for readers who prefer straightforward, linear narratives, "Arrogance" is nonetheless a penetrating fictional exploration of Schiele's artistic genius as related not only from the facts of his life, but also from the imaginary inner world of the artist and those around him, including his long-time female companion, Vallie Neuzil, and a fictional female narrator who tells of her fascination and involvement with Schiele and Vallie during their residence in the small Austrian village of Neulengbach, where Schiele was arrested for corruption of minors.

"Arrogance" is a vivid and convincing portrait of the life and mind of the artist, a complex narrative that challenge the reader to understand and interpret that life from multiple perspectives, both biographical and imaginative. It is, in short, a brilliant example of how fiction and imagination can inform biography, how literature can be written to illuminate and inform the real.

"Arrogance" is a worthwhile novel, beautifully written, full of astute observations on art in general and Schiele in particular. The unusual kaleidoscopic narrative structure of the book led me to take my time with it. Because one is constantly shifting in time and point of view, it can feel that, as a "story," the book never gets off the ground. On the other hand, this stylistic choice encouraged me to savor each page as I might in a book of poems. (Also, the language is extremely well-crafted, as in poetry.) Here is a quote that, for me, encapsulated not only Scott's subject but her own way of putting the novel together: "Symmetry and perspective, chiaroscuro, balance--all these, Egon Schiele believes, offer false comfort, and man is truly aware only when he learns to accept, even to delight in the incongruous, terrifying nature of the visual world."

Egon Schiele lived a brief and turbulent artistic life, dying of influenza in 1918 at the age of twenty-eight. Schiele was a draftsman and printmaker, but was best known as a painter. He entered the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts at the tender age of sixteen and soon became a student of August Klimt, the most well known Austrian painter of that time. As one of the preeminent artists associated with Austrian expressionism, Schiele's paintings are transgressive depictions of contorted, erotically charged nude figures, often in provocative sexual poses and often including young girls. Not surprisingly, Schiele's art was controversial. Moreover, his use of adolescent girls as models for his drawings and paintings led to numerous charges of immorality. Often, this simply meant he had to move from one small Austrian town to another, hounded by the wrath of common people who viewed him as morally repugnant. However, in one case, Schiele was prosecuted and spent time in prison for his averred transgressions.

"Arrogance" is Joanna Scott's fictional account of Schiele's life, a parallax narrative that tells its tale from a series of changing and different perspectives. Nominated for the 1991 PEN/Faulkner Award (which, regrettably, it did not win), it subsequently earned Scott a MacArthur Fellowship for her presumed literary genius. While not a novel for readers who prefer straightforward, linear narratives, "Arrogance" is nonetheless a penetrating fictional exploration of Schiele's artistic genius as related not only from the facts of his life, but also from the imaginary inner world of the artist and those around him, including his long-time female companion, Vallie Neuzil, and a fictional female narrator who tells of her fascination and involvement with Schiele and Vallie during their residence in the small Austrian village of Neulengbach, where Schiele was arrested for corruption of minors.

"Arrogance" is a vivid and convincing portrait of the life and mind of the artist, a complex narrative that challenge the reader to understand and interpret that life from multiple perspectives, both biographical and imaginative. It is, in short, a brilliant example of how fiction and imagination can inform biography, how literature can be written to illuminate and inform the real.

I bought the second edition under the misleading impression that the contents will be updated, even though the conclusions may still stand. Instead, I have a book that's 95% same as before, plus some random afterthoughts on the main thesis that the Habsburg Monarchy self imploded because of losing the war, and not from the rampant nationalities conflict in an age of nationalism. If you want to read Sked's work on the Monarchy, just buy some second hand first edition.

And if you want a refreshing look at European history, look no further than Paul Schroeder's majestic The Transformation of European Politics.

If the book has a theme, it is that the Dynasty and the Empire were not in irreversible decline and the fall, brought about by defeat in WWI, was not inevitable. Why the title then? Well, towards the end of the book, in a couple of chapters added to the second edition, Sked admits that the title was chosen by his publishers and not by him.

My main reason for contributing this review is that I don't think it is clear from other reviews here that Sked's book is not a narrative or comprehensive history of the Habsburg Empire from the Congress of Vienna until its fall. It is rather a series of essays which reflect on other historians' treatment of some of the major themes in Habsburg historiography. These are interesting, challenging, occasionally repetitive, but are not, and do not pretend to be, a substitute for a general history of the period (such as C.A. Macartney's great work).

First let me say that academically the book is both readable and factual in its content. But I found the book troubling for two reasons. First, Professor Sked writes like an English Lecture. He poses questions which he answers with his own opinions, many times taking other authors opinions to task. Those that he doesn't agree with he speaks of as liberal or extreme or having "missed the point". Secondly as this is a Second Edition,
it should have been brought up to date with information that has been developed over the last twelve years.

As an example of his inability to rewrite his own words (which he takes as sacrosanct) there is an aside that refers to the USSR and the eastern european satellites. He makes a referral to what would happen in eastern europe if the USSR were to go multi-party, hinting at chaos on the terms of Yugoslavia. Where has he been for the last ten years? No chaos, some nations in NATO and others being accepted into the EU.

Lastly, he shows a pronounced weakness in his understanding of military matters. In his discussion of the failure of the 1848 Hungarian Revolution, he dismisses the treatment of other nationalities in the Hungarian Crown Lands as being self-defeating but not disasterous. He especially discounts the Croats. Napoleon, not a bad general, described the Croat Cavalry
as the best in Europe, both for their bravery and ability to endure hardship. He used them as his scouts for his intelligence services and gave them credit for helping to secure many of his victories. They would not have won the was for the Hungarians, but they could have been a thorn in the side of both the Austrians and Russians. Instead the helped to defeat the Hungarians at every major battle.

Reading this book is informational, but you must be prepared to spend a lot of time searching around Professor Sked's opinions and biases to get to the facts.

This text is truly invaluable for students of the Habsburg Monarchy. It's major strength has to be that it is analytical in style, providing explanations for the decline in fortunes of the Habsburg Monarchy. It is also innovative in that it provides a new perspective on the last century of Habsburg rule. Sked's book is an extremely readable text, which is accessible for all. An added bonus is that it provides a background to the historiography surrounding the Austrian Empire. Even if you do not agree with Sked's conclusions, it will certainly give you something new to think about, and is a useful antidote to the more traditional interpretaions of the Habsburg decline. I cannot recommend this book strongly enough!

What I am about to type concerning this book will be rather political, so I should make it clear at the outset that the author himself has no political axe to grind. He is simply examining and refuting some common misconceptions about the last century of the Habsburg Empire and the causes of it's fall. If that is what you are looking for, you could not do better than to read this book. This is *the best* book on the subject in English, bar none. If that is your interest, **buy it**, without reservation. Alan Sked's political opinions appear no where in it's pages, which are full of hard facts and strong historical thinking. It is in every way a model piece of historical scholarship.

The reason I see this as a very political text is that the history of the fall of the Habsburgs has been put to ideological use for a long time now. The Habsburg Empire was dismembered by that crusading moralist professor, Woodrow Wilson, in the name of "Democracy", "Progress", and other "enlightened" ideals for which he was willing to kill and send others to die.

It has been argued that the fall of the Habsburgs was a kind of bellwether, proving the inevitable progress of modernity and modern politics over the face of the whole Earth as a reactionary dionsaur of an empire finally died under the weight of it's own anachronism and decrepitude. The author of this book disproves that thesis totally. He demonstrates definitively that the Habsburg Empire was not weak or inept, and that in fact it faced it's worse crisis in 1848, and, having survived that, was viable as a political unit right up until the end of it's life. There was no mass longing for democracy, no mass discontent with the ancient Monarchy of the House of Habsburg, no demand for "national sovereignty" or "self-determination" on the part of the many nationalities of the Empire. They were fiercely loyal to the Monarchy right up until the end of it's existence. The Habsburgs fell, not because of the "turning of the tides of history" against them, but because they picked the wrong side in WWI. Period.

The fact that this is so undermines most of the cherished myths of the modern West. It proves that history has no inevitable current ending up with us, since it shows that the way history turned out was in fact the result of the individual choices of men, rather than the effect of some kind of powerful underlying trend that men could not have shaped. It proves that democratic gov't's are not the only ones capable of being seen as legitimate in the eyes of their people and that a nation of highly cultured and relatively wealthy people (the Austrians) could happily and freely choose to live under a radically different form of gov't, namely a hereditary monarchy. It proves that a powerful multi-ethinc state can be built, if ethnicity is carefully divorced from political power and protected (the Empire of the Habsburgs was virutally a microcosm of Europe in it's vast ethnic diversity). It proves that religion can be effectively joined to gov't - the Habsburg Empire was a confessional Catholic state until the end.

In short, it proves that the supposedly axiomatic modern truths about how politics just has to be are really just so many lies. There was, once upon a time, a strong, viable, multi-ethnic, confessional, hereditarily monarchical empire, that was a living force in world politics right up until the First World War, and that only ceased to be so after it was deliberately destoryed by the victors of that war, who sought to impose their ideology at all costs on the conquered, even if it meant destroying an ancient state and everything that was based on it. We know the results of this well: the wellspring of nationalisms this created has turned the Balkans into a killing field, and it left no strong power in the Germanic world that might have checked the Nazis after Germany itself was raped by the vitorious Allies; thus, the dismemberment of the Habsburg Empire cleared the way for Hitler and every horror to follow him in Central Europe. This was the price foreigners were made to pay so that professor Wilson could "Make the world safe for democracy". No amount of foreign blood is too much, apparently, for the ideals of a progressive intellectual.