Thunder At Twilight: Vienna 1913/1914 Morton HB/DJ 1989 1st ed. VG+/NEAR FINE

Description: Thunder At Twilight: Vienna 1913/1914 By Frederic Morton Charles Scribner's Sons New York 1989 x, [4], 385 p.: 8 unpaginated pages containing 21 illustrations; 24 cm. (9.5 inches). Black cloth spine, with gilt-stamped spine title, brown paper over boards, with blind-stamped front-cover author's initials. Glossy, color illustrated dust jacket, featuring a painting, entitled Neuer Markt Am Abend, by Ferdinand Kruis, courtesy of Historisches Museum der Stat Wien. Includes Afterword, Acknowledments, Source References, Selected Bibliography, and Index. Map on endpapers of Vienna, 1913-1914. First Edition "'Austria;' it was once said, 'is the laboratory of the apocalypse;' Now, Frederic Morton's astounding new book raises the curtain on an apocalyptic ballroom: Vienna in the two years before World War I. It was during the carnival of 1913 that young Stalin arrived here on a mission that would launch him into the upper echelon of Russian revolutionaries. It was in Vienna that Pravda was first published by Leon Trotsky. It was here, while couples whirled the night away, that Stalin first collided with Trotsky, the start of a feud destined to shape the as yet unborn Soviet Union under Lenin (who lived in Habsburg Cracow, not far from the Austrian capital). It was in Vienna at that time that the failed artist Adolf Hitler gloomed through the revels; it was here that he kept daubing watercolors and spouting tirades at fellow drifters in his flophouse. It was in Vienna at that time that the auto mechanic Josip Broz - not yet Marshal Tito - took dancing and fencing lessons. It was during Vienna's 1913 carnival that Sigmund Freud neared the end of an essay he would use as a weapon in his imminent duel with Carl Jung. He called it Totem and Taboo and dealt in it with the myth - primeval and prophetic - of the slaying of the leader by the horde: the once and future murder of the prince. And it was during the carnival of 1913 that the doomed Crown Prince of Austria~Hungary, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, had a troubled audience with the Emperor Franz Joseph. Twenty months later, the bullet that killed the Archduke set off the Great War that killed 10 million more. Frederic Morton illuminates these twenty months with a brilliance that makes this book a landmark of historical vision. Thunder at Twilight uses hitherto untapped sources (like the unpublished memoirs of Prince Alois von Auersperg) as well as the living texture of the daily journalism of the period. In these pages, two crucial years come alive; we see and hear their reality in streetcorner scenes; in the thrust and parry between the Archduke Franz Ferdinand and the Court camarilla; in the bizarre conspiracy headed by a teen~age admirer of Nietzsche, who changed the world when he pointed his pistol at the Archduke in Sarajevo; and in the subsequent slaughter-happy hysteria of the masses that stampeded the diplomats into war. Frederic Morton explores the seedbed of the disaster - men alienated by their own modernity. His global perspective includes an anxious President Wilson, a mercurial Winston Churchill as First Lord of the British Admiralty, the posturings of Kaiser Wilhelm, the waverings of Tsar Nicholas. But above all, Morton evokes Vienna - Vienna, the opulent, elegant, incomparable sunset metropolis; Vienna, volcano of the twentieth-century Zeitgeist. This book represents a masterly culmination of Frederic Morton's gifts as a historian. Thunder at Twilight is an all-too-true drama of depth and scope and relevance to our lives today" [from the dust jacket] ISBN: 0684191431 Book is in Very Good Plus Condition: pages bright, clean, tight, and unmarked; top edge of the spine very slightly loose; outside top page edges with light soiling. Dust Jacket is in Near Fine Condition: light shelf wear Copyright 2020 All text in this listing description is the sole property of Classic Books and Ephemera and may not be copied without permission from Classic Books and Ephemera. SHIPPING and HANDLING: The purchaser receives free media mail in the U.S. We ship all books in boxes, well protected, within 24 hours of the order (Monday - Saturday), always with tracking. 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Price: 27.13 USD

Location: Lansdowne, Pennsylvania

End Time: 2024-12-23T06:13:19.000Z

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