The Viennese Splendor, Twilight and Exile,

A popular history covering 2,000 years, but focusing on the last years of Vienna's greatest glory the period between WWI and WWII. Lacks a coherent bibliography. Illustrated. Acidic paper. Annotation copyright Book News, Inc. Portland, Or.

Hofmann, who served as New York Times bureau chief in his native Vienna, writes of the city with the ambivalence he tells us is typical of the Viennese, who have always had a love/hate relationship with their home. The splendid city of Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Freud and Kokoschka harbors a tortured souleven Johann Strauss was not the happy man his gay waltzes would lead us to believe. Vienna's popular image as a genial place of coffeehouses and Gemutlichkeit is deceptive, Hofmann shows us; the city that inspired so many artists, musicians and intellectuals is also the city that gave Hitler a hero's welcome in 1938 and is now the seat of Waldheim's government. Today, the Austrian capital seems mired in depression and decline. Although the author does not delve deeply into the psychology of the Viennese neurosis, he describes candidly the people of this city from the golden days of the Baroque era to the present.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Hofmann, a former New York Times bureau chief in Rome, has written a penetrating, engaging, vivid cultural history of his native Vienna, covering 2000 years and focusing mainly on the fame, foibles, and fortunes of its cultural elitein music, art, and literature, architecture and psychology. Hofmann limns the ambivalent tone of Viennese high society, with its gaiety and extraordinary talent, punctuated by depression, decadence, and intrigue. His book evocatively captures the neurotic soul of a city which repeatedly produced human genius and yet was so enthusiastically won over to Nazism. Illuminating; heartily recommended for students of European history and culture. Benny Kraut, Univ . of Cincinnati
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.