Vienna A Cultural History [Paperback]

From border garrison of the Roman Empire to magnificent Baroque seat of the Hapsburgs, Vienna's fortunes swung between survival and expansion. By the late nineteenth century it had become the western capital of the sprawling Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, but the twentieth century saw it degraded to a 'hydrocephalus' cut off from its former economic hinterland. After the inglorious Nazi interlude, Vienna began the long climb back to the prosperous and cultivated city of 1.7 million inhabitants that it is today. Subjected to constant infusions of new, Vienna has both assimilated and resisted cultural influences from outside, creating its own sui generis culture.

Foreword by Neal Acheson
Part I: The Capua of Minds
Vienna Preserved: the Palimpsest
Vienna Liberata: Civic Pride and the Metropolis
How to be Viennese
Masters and Servants: a Tale of Cognitive Dissonance
Love-Hate and Austromasochism
Clich?s and the Art of Self-Irony
Backing into the Future
Part II: The Spirit of Place
Viennese Topography
Notes on Wienerisch and Wienerlieder
The Death Cult in Vienna
The Life of the Phaeacians
Part III: The Ages of the City
The Romans on the Danube
Light at the End of the Tunnel
The Early Habsburgs
Humanism, Refofrmation and Counter-Reformation
Baroque Vienna
The Enlightenment in Vienna
Biedermeier Vienna
From Revolution to Ringstrasse
Fin-de-si?cle Vienna
Republics and Dictatorships
Epilogue: Bernhard and Jellinek
Further Reading

Nicholas Parsonsis the author ofBlue Guides to Vienna and Austria, and'Worth the Detour': A History of the Guidebook.