Austria & Hungary

The definitive history of a powerful family dynasty who dominated Europe for centuries - from their rise to power to their eventual downfall....

German military history is typically viewed as an inexorable march to the rise of Prussia and the two world wars, the road paved by militarism and the result a specifically German way of war. Peter Wilson challenges this narrative....

The vibrant, sprawling saga of Empress Maria Theresa - one of the most renowned women rulers in history - and three of her extraordinary daughters, including Marie Antoinette, the doomed queen of France....

From the critically acclaimed historian Victor Sebestyen, the enthralling  account of historical and cultural events that defined Budapest, a unique city on the fault line between East and West in the heart of Europe....

For five brief, glorious days in the autumn of 1956, the Hungarian revolution gave its people a glimpse at a different kind of future - until the citizens of Budapest awoke one morning to the shattering sound of Russian tanks ravaging their streets. The revolution was over....

It was during the carnival of 1913 that a young Stalin arrived in Vienna on a mission that would launch him into the upper echelon of Russian revolutionaries....

Wolfram Siemann paints a fundamentally new image of the man who shaped Europe for over four decades. He reveals Metternich as more modern and his career much more forward-looking than we have ever recognized....

Budapest, autumn 1943. After four years of war, Hungary was firmly allied with Nazi Germany. Budapest swirled with intrigue and betrayal, home to spies and agents of every kind. But the city remained an oasis in the midst of conflict where Allied POWs and Polish and Jewish refugees found sanctuary.

In 1930s and 1940s Vienna, psychiatrist Hans Asperger sought to define autism as a diagnostic category, aiming to treat those children he deemed capable of participating fully in society. Depicted as a compassionate researcher, Asperger was in fact deeply influenced by Nazi psychiatry....

A powerfully argued and utterly definitive account of a murderous tyrant we thought we understood, Hitler is essential listening for anyone seeking to understand the origins and outcomes of the Second World War....

Richard Cockett gives us the entirety of an extraordinary story of how one city made the modern world—and how we all remain inescapably Viennese....

The Habsburg family ruled central Europe since the early medieval times to World War I, but they still exist as one of the most prestigious Austrian families. To keep themselves in such high positions, the Habsburgs had to develop unique strategies to fight their political enemies....

A distinguished professor debunks the assertion that America's Founders were deists who desired the strict separation of church and state and instead shows that their political ideas were profoundly influenced by their Christian convictions....

When Austrian President Franz Jonas visited the Vatican in 1971, Pope Paul VI named Austria “the Island of the Blessed”. He did so to emphasize Austria’s steep recovery. Only 25 years had passed since the end of the Second World War....

The Austro-Hungarian army that marched east and south to confront the Russians and Serbs in the opening campaigns of World War I had a glorious past but a pitiful present....

The Angel Makers is a true-crime story like no other—a 1920s midwife who may have been the century’s most prolific killer leading a murder ring of women responsible for the deaths of at least 160 men....

Drawing on unpublished letters and rare primary sources, King and Woolmans tell the true story behind the tragic romance and brutal assassination that sparked World War I....

The extraordinary story of a life suspended between the collapse of the imperial order and the violent emergence of modern Europe....

The Envoy is the stirring tale of how one man made the greatest difference in the face of untold evil.

On a snowy January morning in 1889, a worried servant hacked open a locked door at the remote hunting lodge deep in the Vienna Woods. Inside, he found two bodies sprawled on an ornate bed....

Winner of the 2017 Prix Goncourt, this eye-opening account of the muddled forces at work behind the Anschluss brilliantly dismantles the myth of a glorious and inevitable Nazi victory....

Sigmund Freud was a catalyst who signaled a seat change in how humanity came to understand the world and how it relates to the human mind. And if you have ever had a “Freudian slip”, you know full well that the concepts and theories of Mr. Freud are well ensconced in the modern lexicon....

The iconic image of Beethoven is of him as a lone genius: hair wild, fists clenched, and brow furrowed. Beethoven may well have shaped the music of the future, but he was also a product of his time, influenced by the people, politics, and culture around him....

The Crossroads of Civilization is a rich and illuminating history of the world capital that has transformed art, culture, and politics....

As he rose to power, Hitler's hatred toward the Habsburgs and their diverse empire fixated on Franz Ferdinand's sons, who became outspoken critics of the Nazi party and its racist ideology. When Germany seized Austria in 1938, they were the first two Austrians arrested by the Gestapo....