A Pulitzer Prize Winner and landmark book from one of the truly original scholars of our time: a magnificent revelation of turn-of-the-century Vienna where out of a crisis of political and social disintegration so much of modern art and thought was born.
"Not only is it a splendid exploration of several aspects of early modernism in their political context; it is an indicator of how the discipline of intellectual history is currently practiced by its most able and ambitious craftsmen. It is also a moving vindication of historical study itself, in the face of modernism's defiant suggestion that history is obsolete."
-- David A. Hollinger,
History Book Club Review "Each of [the seven separate studies] can be read separately....Yet they are so artfully designed and integrated that one who reads them in order is impressed by the book's wholeness and the momentum of its argument."
-- Gordon A. Craig,
The New Republic "A profound work...on one of the most important chapters of modern intellectual history" -- H.R. Trevor-Roper, front page, T
he New York Times Book Review "Invaluable to the social and political historian...as well as to those more concerned with the arts" -- John Willett,
The New York Review of Books "A work of original synthesis and scholarship. Engrossing."
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Newsweek