Austria Books

Kaufmann acknowledges as one of his central aims to introduce Franz Anton Maulbertsch to art historians outside Central Europe, who are, he says, not yet sufficiently aware of his outstanding achievements. A good idea, he thinks, to make him palatable to newcomers is to disperse the aura of 'strangeness' surrounding him - "The present book", he says, "aims to make the apparently strange seem familiar." To me, this seems all wrong - who, e.g., would try to proselytize for Goya by playing down the sheer extravagance of his imagaination and trying, so to speak, to domesticate him? And do believe me, Maulbertsch, in his most visionary moments is in his own peculiar way not far behind Goya, and thus the very thing to do to make his claims to the pantheon of art history truly convincing would be to celebrate Maulbertsch's strangeness and exuberant fancy.

Kaufmann, sadly, has for most of the time a quite different aganda. He focuses on the way Maulbertsch was influenced by enlightenment, the rise of neo-classicism and all the concomitant theories; that is, he 'familiarizes' him by linking him to certain intellectual debates of his times. But unfortunately these were influences that on the whole forced Maulbertsch to rein in his more imaginative sallies und in many cases - especially in large-scale fresco painting - diluted his artistic capabilities. How a great painter of the 2nd half of the 18th century, trained in the school of late baroque extravaganza, tried to come to terms with the emerging ideas of clarity, sobriety and dignity, makes of course a fascinating story, but as the focus of a beginner's guide to Maulbertsch is does not seem particularly suitable. Art historians conversant with the wider horizons of Central European painting might even point out that some of Maulbertsch's colleagues achieved better results when trying to strike a compromise between Baroque training and the neo-classicist demands of the day. The merits of later Maulbertsch have always been a point of some controversy; his dazzling virtuosity in the early stages of his career has never been seriously doubted by anyone looking into his oeuvre.

To what extent Maulbertsch got involved in late 18th century debates is, by the way, a terrain well trodden over in German language Maulbertsch scholarship. Perhaps it is not surprising that so many scholars have set their hearts on it and that Mr Kaufmann has been eager to join their rank: You can fill quite a lot of pages by going lovingly over all those contemporary theories, programmes and reviews that make up the 'discourse' sourrounding late Maulbertsch (or should I rather say the 'discursive haze'?), whereas it is much harder to untangle the various threads that have gone into creating the unique stylistic bravura of Maulbertsch in his heyday.

Still, you might fo course argue that it is good thing to bring Maulbertsch to the notice of the English speaking world at all; and after all there are lots of illustrations (covering all stages of Maulbertsch's career), some of which might indeed make the reader fall in love with Maulbertsch's strangeness in spite of Mr Kaufmann's attempt to tame and civilize him. Regrettably, quite a few of the pictures are of such staggeringly poor quality that it is hard to understand how they could possibly be compatible with the standards to be expected from a unviersity press; pictures that look as if they had been printed in some East European backwater town of the 1960s.

The author conducted extensive research about the pronunciation of English in Austria. While there is nothing to be said against an empircial approach the author offers a lot of facts but does not discuss the underlying socio-political problems. Thus, the book offers some interesting raw-data ("word-counting" linguistics!) but fails to adress the larger issues.

I think all of you have heard the stories that Kurt Waldheim was a ...Nazi that went on to be the head of the UN, well this book tries it's best to prove this theory. The book covers Waldheim's full life, and at first the reader would almost think it was an authorized biography. It covers the first 20 years of his life in a nice and short method that seams that it could have been anyone growing up in Europe at the time. When we hit World War Two that is when the family has problems and this book turns into a very unauthorized biography. After reading the book I went to the library and pulled up a few of the old news paper articles on the topic when it was big news, and it looks like this author captured the mood of the media at the time. Convict the man for ratings and let him prove he did not do it, a very difficult issue with something so old.

Overall the book does document Waldheim's service in the Waffen SS, but does not defiantly put Kurt in the location of any known atrocities of war (then again sometime it is all a matter of judgment of what is and is not fair play in combat). I think the author's main push is simple to make you believe that just because he was in the Waffen SS, that he must have preformed war crimes. This may be somewhat of a convincing argument if you do not know much about the make up of the Waffen SS, but if you do then it does not hold water. The Waffen SS was just a unit of fast reaction forces, not the head holocaust perpetrators. Overall the book was mildly interesting, but only if you are really into the topic would I suggest you read it.

I bought this book for my Mom as a xmas gift. I bought a similar book (The Splendor of Malta) for my Dad and was very satisfied. This is a childrens book with very large text. It is NOT for adults! Although it is a nice kids book, it is very thin (only about 25 pages) and it is absolutely NOT worth $26! I gave it 2 stars because of the price. If it were $9.95 and advertised as a kids book I would give it 3-4 stars.
JoeB

I bought this book before my first trip to Austria. I had a
sinking feeling while reading it that it was mostly a
pastiche of unusable generalizations. That turned out to be
true. What shall we do with a paragraph that tells us that
Austrian women are strong-minded and independent and
organize their homelife well, although many go to work?

This book might have some value for a person who had never
left their english-speaking homeland before and needed to
be warned that people are sometimes naked in the sauna
or at the beach. It also provides some amusing anecdotes
about language (especially viennese) and useful info about
festivals.

Mostly, though this book was good for reading aloud to
Austrian friends. I would quote it as an iron-clad
authority when their behavior didn't quite match the
book's version and thereby amused them tremendously.


--Lynn Hoffman, author of THE NEW SHORT COURSE IN WINE and
the forthcoming novel bang BANG from Kunati Books.ISBN
9781601640005

I've used the "Culture Shock" series many times before going to foreign countries and have found them to be a valuable resource. Not so this time. The two authors focus almost exclusively on Vienna. In the all-important "settling in" section that details all the red tape foreigners need to go through to get the required paperwork done, find a doctor, etc., the authors only discuss what to do and where to go in Vienna, where most embassies are located and finding large post offices and hospitals is much easier than in more remote parts of the country. Great if you're moving to Vienna.

But what if you're like me, moving to a much smaller city where I won't have easy access to government offices and international services? What do I do? Can I do paperwork through the mail or online? Well, I've read the book and still don't know, since there's no mention of anything outside Vienna.

****Most egregiously, in the "Resource Guide" listings at the end of the book, for schools, German language classes, banks, post offices, social organizations, hospitals, dentists, and shopping centers, there are NO LISTINGS OUTSIDE VIENNA.**** It wouldn't have taken the authors much effort to do a search for some addresses of places elsewhere in Austria.

If I'm to follow this book, I guess I'll have to take the train five hours to Vienna just to deposit a check.

This book is horribly disapointing. I bought it before spending two semesters studying in Austria and instead of reading something that would in some way prepare me for what I was to experience, I found a biased, xenophobic, uneducated critique of a, contrary to what the authors have to say, wonderful country. The only part that was good was the section concerning food, but you needn't bother, menus in Austria are also written in English

I read this book in the first couple of weeks my new life in Austria. Now, after having lived here for two years I can honestly say this book is terrible. There have been very few occasions where I felt that I could agree with the authors' assessment of Austria, in particular with regards to cultural obeservations. I can't help shake the feeling that the Author was a bored diplomat's wife who cobbled together a book after a few discussions with her ex-patriot friends.

If you are interested in daily life in Austria during the Napoleonic period then there is something here for you, as this novel contains insights on that. However, if you want to know about Wagram, well I keep thumbing through this book and I can't find the chapter on it! It is not a bad book, it just has a misleading title.

This book which I purchased in hopes of finding more info on the battle of Wagram (why would I think it had something to do with that?) turned out to be a turgid and boring novel. Action? No... Plot? There was one. So one point for implementation. Conclusion? I returned it in disgust.

The other review was so negative that I bought the book. Yes, the prose is lousy. The logic jumps around so much that the problem must be with the author rather than the translator. This book has three merits. First, it is a useful source of random information (I had never heard of the Csangos before). Second, it is useful to be reminded to the historical attitudes that so often make central Europe ungovernable. Third, it makes us more conscious of similar biases in our own history. If this can get into English, one wonders what remains in the decent obscurity of a local language.

This book has the distinction of being the worst book I have ever read. It is poorly written and often completely incomprehensible. Making matters worse it was written in Hungarian and poorly translated to English. I would be able to overlook those obvious problems with the book if the content was valid, unfortunately the author wrote this book with an extreme bias towards the Hungarian version of Transylvanian history and the truth is often lost to myth. Further undermining the creditability of the author is his lack of citations. He uses several quotes without citing any sources and expects his readers to take his word on good faith. There is very little organization to the chapters and he jumps back and forth through various time periods with no notice. Transylvanian history is complex enough without having to deal with this authors poor organization. I wouldn't recommend this book to anyone and I question how it ever managed to get published in the first place!

The presentation is great - I thought this would be a treat. Great binding, nice ribbon, and maybe this would make a good introduction to Klimt's erotic figure-work BUT . . .! There are only 56 drawings, most of them have been seen and reproduced in other books. An index gives specific information about the images but since the pages are unnumbered, good luck trying to match a drawing with its description.

The drawings are not in chronological order so you can't see Klimt's style change. The drawings are cut off and cropped sloppily and set on the page arbitrarily; some in the middle of the page, others shoved to the top or bottom for no particular reason. Actual image quality varies since the drawings are taken from a variety of sources; some look as if they were hastily run through Photoshop to clean them up. (But if you tell this was done, if you can SEE the digital manipulation, that doesn't say much, now does it?) Judging by the screen dots and other indicators some drawings show, a lot of these drawings were scanned from other books, run through a Photoshop-type of program to fill out the page - and not very diligently. I think the publishers were trying to be artistic. Or something. They've failed miserably.

Thames & Hudson did an Egon Schiele book a while ago that shows you CAN do this kind of thing well, at a great price and with tons of illustrations, not just 56. In April of 2006, they are going to release a Klimt book. Skip this feeble Prestel book and wait for the T&H book.

One last observation about the book at hand: the drawing on page 34 is badly placed at the bottom of the page . . . and is UPSIDE DOWN.

I bought this book because I saw the exhibit at the Musee Maillot in Paris in 2005 and stupidly didn't buy their book of the drawings as I thought I could buy it here it here in the US. (Which isn't possible). This is an extremely disappointing pick of very few of his drawings, all of which were certainly not my favorites. There were so many which better demonstrated his skill in catching the expression, the sexuality and the beauty in very few lines I am surprised at all the inclusions and the exclusions. In my mind he picked the weaker drawings. And yes, they didn't even catch an obvious drawing inserted upside down, which unfortunately states a lot since there are so few of them.

Ninety per cent of the material in this book is lifted from works by the likes of A J P Taylor, and any serious historian would be well advised to buy a book by a better historian than Tim Chapman.

I have read many books on the Empress Elizabeth of Austria but this one is the worst of all. The author writes so incredible stories it's a shame. The dates are inexact too. A novel would be much better. The poor Empress if you believe this woman passed half of her life running away with men, hating her husband etc... One star is even a lot. It would be a pity to read, but if you are a collector maybe you'll like, even with that in mind I would never recommend it.