The Viennese. Splendor, twilight, and exile

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Few cities in history have so captured the world's imagination as the fabled city of Vienna. This uniquely European venue has a schizophrenic past -- the birthplace of both the waltz and psychoanalysis, Zionism and Nazism, and home to Mozart, Beethoven, Adolf Hitler, Marie Antoinette, Leon Trotsky, Sigmund Freud, Martin Buber, Billy Wilder, Fritz Lang, Franz Kafka, and countless other artists, writers, scientists, philosophers, composers, madmen, and saints. Veteran New York Times correspondent Paul Hofmann, a native Viennese, brings this enchanted land of contradictions vibrantly to life. This first-of-its-kind sociohistorical analysis covers two thousand years of Viennese history, politics, and culture, examining in detail a brilliant group of Jewish émigrés, forced to flee the ominous rise of National Socialism, and their immeasurable contribution to the culture of a dozen scattered countries, among them the United States, Australia, Israel, Canada, and England. From the reign of Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius to the controversial rise of President Kurt Waldheim, The Viennese is a richly detailed portrait of a city with untold influence upon the development of Western civilization as we know it today.