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face of modernism's defiant suggestion that history is obsolete."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." --
Newsweek
