The Austrians: A Thousand Year Odyssey [Paperback]

Gordon Brook-Shepherd (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 1997

The nation-state of Austria has only existed since the fall of the Austro-Hungarian Habsburg empire in 1918. This work examines the Austrian people's struggle to find their identity against the pull of multi-national Danubian traditions on one hand and racial German ties on the other. It also describes the role the Austrians have to play in the modern world and how they have come to terms with their recent past.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Brook-Shepherd (The Last Empress, HarperCollins, 1991) attempts to give an overview of 1000 years of Austrian history in one volume. Because he was posted by the British Army to Vienna during the post-World War II occupation and personally knew many important Austrians, it is hardly surprising that he takes only 150 pages to cover 996-1914 and 362 pages to cover the final 82 years. Sadly, a disdain for footnotes and attribution defeats a lively writing style, and the work also suffers from annoying generalizations about national characteristics (e.g., "the endemic slackness of the Austrians"). Brook-Shepherd's inside knowledge, however, makes the book worthwhile. When he finally attributes new documents from the Hapsburg family archives, such as Empress Zita's previously unknown diary from the final days of the empire, he reveals new information. For public and undergraduate libraries but a frustration to scholars.?Randall L. Schroeder, Wartburg Coll. Lib., Waverly, Iowa
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Booklist

Austria has always been a borderland, a collision point of cultures and politics. Surveying its story over the centuries, Brook-Shepherd brings the experience of long residence in Austria plus authorship of numerous books on specific episodes of Austrian history to chronicle the dynastic fortunes of the Hapsburgs, who, perched in the middle of the Danube basin, had to fend off invaders coming upriver (the Turks) or downriver (Protestants and later the French). Over time, the Hapsburgs assembled a remarkable multinational empire, with impossibly complicated constitutional arrangements whose evolution Brook-Shepherd nevertheless manages to make clear. But the flames of nationalism, the Serbian candle of which the Austrians recklessly attempted to snuff out in 1914, burned down the whole creaky edifice. The author then devotes great detail to Austria's unhappy experience through 1945 and its rehabilitation since then, with a few hangovers, such as having had a possible war criminal (Kurt Waldheim) as its president. A solidly informative and well-written work. Gilbert Taylor --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 512 pages
• Publisher: Harpercollins; First Edition edition (June 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 000638255X
• ISBN-13: 978-0006382553
• Product Dimensions: 7.6 x 5.1 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,051,195 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

31 of 31 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Not perfect, but best overview of Austrian history avail, April 1, 2001

By 

J. G. Heiser (Sunninghill, Berks) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Austrians: A Thousand-Year Odyssey (Paperback)

English-language books on the long-term history of Austria are relatively rare. Admittedly, Austria was one of the most historically interesting places in the world during the latter part of Franz Josef's reign-dozens of interesting books are available covering events and movements encompassing the intellectual flowering of Wien beginning in the late Victorian period. Giant personalities in the fields of visual art, psychology, music, philosophy, literature and theatre could seemingly be found in every coffee house in turn-of-the century Wien.

But judging from the available books, outside of the ever-busy Hapsburg family, little of interest to the rest of the world seems to have taken place before the last quarter of the 19th century. This is reflected in "The Austrians", which in spite of being a 483 page book, reaches the year 1866 by page 88. I think it would be fair to think of the book as more like a 140-year odyssey with a very long introduction.

Outside of the short shrift given to early Austrian history, I found this an enjoyable and informative book. Austria is unique among modern European nations in having been for centuries the spiritual center of one of Europe's largest empires, yet it is now a relatively small country of relatively little influence on the world stage-the teutonic rump left over from the mostly-voluntary dissolution of a multi-ethnic dual-monarchy. Given this relatively short period in which to develop a sense of unique national identity, Brook-Shepherd attempts to show in his book how seminal events in Austrian history are either influential on today's sense of nationhood (however strong that may be), or are least illustrative of typical characteristics of Austrian culture or character. This is a difficult task, and I think the author is only partially successful.

Still, it is a noble attempt, and although it sometimes feels as if the author is straining to make an obscure point about Austrian nationhood, in general, this doesn't really interfere with the book. The author has spent significant time in post-war Austria and has a number of interesting contacts both within what is left of the Hapsburg family and within the Austrian political sphere. He certainly cannot be blamed for taking use of these journalistic and personal contacts in substantiating his history, and unlike some reviewers, I did not feel that this was excessive-it did not distract from the flow of the book for me at all. I cannot say this about the excessive use of footnotes, which I found extremely distracting.

Overall, I found this an enjoyable and informative book. In spite of some flaws, it is the best single-volume English-language source I've found on what is unfortunately, something of an obscure subject. I find it to be complementary to Andrew Wheatcroft's "The Hapsburgs." It takes a very different approach and they two books have relatively minimal overlap.

19 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars SHOULD HAVE A DIFFERENT TITLE, April 25, 2000

By 

Robert Fishman (Long Island, NY) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Austrians: A Thousand-Year Odyssey (Paperback)

I found this to be an interesting book for its coverage of historical events within Austria during the 20th century (i.e., the fall of the Hapsburg monarchy and the Nazi occupation). Brook-Shepherd goes into pretty good detail on these events. However, he devotes much of the book to the 20th Century, and, in a seeming contradiction to the title, does not give as much attention to pre-20th Century developments. For example, he does not give much detail about Maria Therea or Joesph II. Perhaps he should have devoted the book to only the 20th Century.

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Informative, but not what I was looking for, October 6, 1999

By 

Cathy Walker (Washington, DC) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Austrians: A Thousand-Year Odyssey (Paperback)

The title is somewhat misleading. Perhaps the first third of the book covers the period up to the turn of the century. The rest of the book covers the past 100 years. The author dwells on his own contacts (such as with the last Empress of Austro-Hungary), and while they are, of course, valid and lends credibility and interest, he does tend to dwell on some of the convolutions of failed plots and uprisings that never happened. It is a good explanation of the Austrian "character", but I wish he had gone into more detail of the preceding history, instead of dwelling on the WWII era.