This is the eagerly awaited second volume of Jean Bérenger's history of the Habsburgs. It covers the last two centuries of their rule and provides a compelling account of the fluctuations of Habsburg dynastic power and its disintegration after World War One. Bérenger gives a rich portrait of Habsburg greatness under Maria Theresa and Joseph II and shows how their successors proved more adroit at riding the tide of nationalism in their multi-ethnic empire than is often recognised.

The first part of a two-volume history of the Habsburg Empire from its medieval origins to its dismemberment in the First World War. This important volume (which is self-contained) meets a long-felt need for a systematic survey in English of the Habsburgs and their lands in the late medieval and early modern periods. It is primarily concerned with the Habsburg territories in central and northern Europe, but the history of the Spanish Habsburgs in Spain and the Netherlands is also covered. ...

The Vienna I Knew: Memories of a European Childhood by Joseph Wechsberg (80,000 words, 18 illustrations)Wechsberg’s memoir of pre-World War II mittel-Europa recounts with charm and irony life in the dying Habsburg Empire, family stories of wealth gained and lost, the subtleties of coffeehouse culture and the dynamics of Viennese society where one “is at the same time an actor, his own audience, and his own critic.”“[His] early childhood reads like an idyll […] so that while...

What is Europe? Firstly, of course, it is a continent made up of countless disparate peoples, races and nations, and governed by different ideas, philosophies, religions and attitudes. Nonetheless, it has a common thread of history running through it, stitching the lands and peoples of its past and present together into one fabric and held together by the continent's great institutions, such as the Church of Rome, the Holy Roman Empire, the European Union, individual monarchies, trade orga...

A highlight reel of the must-know moments across two millennia of world-changing history—from the Roman age to Charlemagne to von Bismarck to Merkel. The Shortest History books deliver thousands of years of history in one riveting, fast-paced read.A country both admired and feared, Germany has been the epicenter of world events time and again: the Reformation, both World Wars, the fall of the Berlin Wall. It did not emerge as a modern nation until 1871—yet today, G...

The Teutonic Knights were powerful and ferocious advocates of holy war. Their history is suffused with crusading, campaigning and struggle. Feared by their enemies but respected by medieval Christendom, the knights and their Order maintained a firm hold over the Baltic and northern Germany and established a formidable regime which flourished across Central Europe for 300 years.This major new book surveys the gripping history of the knights and their Order and relates their rise to ...

European History from the High Middle Ages, which began in approximately AD 1000, until the modern day.TABLE OF CONTENTS:A Background of European History: Thinking Historically Minded Fall of the Roman Empire Barbarians Unite Romanesque and Gothic Art Papal Power in the Middle Ages Society in the Middle AgesThe Crises of the Middle Ages: Introduction New Breeds of Art The Hundred Years War The Rise of Towns and Commerce Growth of National Monarchies The Black Death Challenges to Spiritual ...

**The dramatic story of the interconnected revolutions that shattered the old European order and transformed the continent“A fully nuanced portrait of a tumultuous year.” —Wall Street Journal**In 1848 a torrent of revolutions ripped through Europe. Crowds of working-class radicals and middle-class liberals in Paris, Milan, Venice, Vienna, Prague, Budapest, Krakow, Munich, and Berlin toppled the old conservative regimes and began the task of forging a new order. Pol...

THERE is, in reality, no collective title for the agglomeration of territories called Austria-Hungary. The House of Habsburg is merely the connecting link between many distinct parts, not only by virtue of conquest or annexation, but also by inheritance and by the right of long possession. It has to be clearly understood that the fact of mutual dislikes among the various peoples of Austria-Hungary does not necessarily impair their loyalty to the house which has stood for so long a period a...

This book offers a comprehensive thousand-year history of the land, people, society, culture and economy of Hungary, from its nebulous origins in the Ural Mountains to the elections of 1988. It tells above all the thrilling story of a people which became a great power in the region and then fought against - and was invaded by - Ottomans, Germans and Soviets. The Hungarian people preserved nevertheless a continuous individuality through its Ural-born language and a specifically Hungaro-Euro...

The Rise and Fall of Prussia by Sebastian Haffner (translated from the German by Ewald Osers; 60,000 words)Sebastian Haffner regarded himself as “a Prussian with a British passport.” In this overview of Prussia’s 170-year history as an independent state, he depicts Prussia’s evolution from a sensational 18th century success story – “a state based on law, one of the first in Europe” – to its absorption into the Third Reich where “the rule of law was the first thing ...

An essential new history of Central Europe that “deftly unravels the strands of a long and complex past” (Wall Street Journal)Central Europe has long been infamous as a region beset by war, a place where empires clashed and world wars began. In The Middle Kingdoms, Martyn Rady offers the definitive history of the region, demonstrating that Central Europe has always been more than merely the fault line between West and East. Even as Central Europea...