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It is also a moving vindication of historical study itself, in the face of modernism's defiant suggestion that history is obsolete."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, The 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
Carl E. Schorske was born in the Bronx, graduated from Columbia College, and earned a master’s degree from Harvard before serving in the Office of Strategic Services, a precursor to the Central Intelligence Agency, during World War II. He returned to Harvard for his PhD. He was a Dayton-Stockton Professor of History and served as director of European Cultural Studies at Princeton University. He was a recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and his book, Fin-de-Siècle Vienna, won the Pulitzer Prize for nonfiction. He died in 2015 at the age of 100. View titles by Carl E. Schorske
Acknowledgments
Introduction

I. Politics and the Psyche: Schnitzler and Hofmannstahl

II. The Ringstrasse, Its Critics, and the Birth of Urban Modernism

III. Politics in a New Key: An Austrian Trio

IV. Politics and Patricide in Freud’s Interpretation of Dreams

V. Gustav Klimt: Painting and the Crisis of the Liberal Ego

VI. The Transformation of the Garden

VII. Explosions in the Garden: Kokoschka and Schoenberg

Index
  • AWARD | 1981
    Pulitzer Prize
"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." --David A. Hollinger

About

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, The 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

Author

Carl E. Schorske was born in the Bronx, graduated from Columbia College, and earned a master’s degree from Harvard before serving in the Office of Strategic Services, a precursor to the Central Intelligence Agency, during World War II. He returned to Harvard for his PhD. He was a Dayton-Stockton Professor of History and served as director of European Cultural Studies at Princeton University. He was a recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and his book, Fin-de-Siècle Vienna, won the Pulitzer Prize for nonfiction. He died in 2015 at the age of 100. View titles by Carl E. Schorske

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Introduction

I. Politics and the Psyche: Schnitzler and Hofmannstahl

II. The Ringstrasse, Its Critics, and the Birth of Urban Modernism

III. Politics in a New Key: An Austrian Trio

IV. Politics and Patricide in Freud’s Interpretation of Dreams

V. Gustav Klimt: Painting and the Crisis of the Liberal Ego

VI. The Transformation of the Garden

VII. Explosions in the Garden: Kokoschka and Schoenberg

Index

Awards

  • AWARD | 1981
    Pulitzer Prize

Praise

"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." --David A. Hollinger

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