Thunder at Twilight: Vienna 1913/1914
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Manufacturer: Da Capo Press
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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 940
EAN: 9780306810213
ISBN: 0306810212
Label: Da Capo Press
Manufacturer: Da Capo Press
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 400
Publication Date: 2001-04
Publisher: Da Capo Press
Release Date: 2001-04-24
Studio: Da Capo Press
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Editorial Reviews:
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Thunder at Twilight is a landmark of historical vision, drawing on hitherto untapped sources to illuminate two crucial years in the life of the extraordinary city of Vienna—and in the life of the twentieth century. It was during the carnival of 1913 that a young Stalin arrived on a mission that would launch him into the upper echelon of Russian revolutionaries, and it was here that he first collided with Trotsky. It was in Vienna that the failed artist Adolf Hitler kept daubing watercolors and spouting tirades at fellow drifters in a flophouse. Here Archduke Franz Ferdinand had a troubled audience with Emperor Franz Joseph—and soon the bullet that killed the archduke would set off the Great War that would kill ten million more. With luminous prose that has twice made him a finalist for the National Book Award, Frederic Morton evokes the opulent, elegant, incomparable sunset metropolis—Vienna on the brink of cataclysm.
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: Very Interesting
Comment: I'm doing research on the hope of writing a romance novel based on a story my ex-husband told me about how his grandfather came to America. I found this book fascinating. It gave me a real feel for the time and the place. And unlike many history books, it wasn't boring.
Customer Rating:
Summary: The Beginning of the End
Comment: Fred Morton certainly lived up to his reputation in this novel about the waning days of the "Imperial City of Vienna" and all the different personages inhabiting the Empire [Stalin, Hitler, Trotsky] during these turbulent pre WWI years. Excellent for history buffs such as myself or anyone else for that matter who enjoys a good read about the declining days of Empire and the effect of the Great War on European Aristocracy. Also interesting to note that Franz Ferdinand's three surviving children [daughter and two sons] were taken in by a friend after their parents murder by a Serbian Terrorist [not family as they were morgantic children due to their mother's status] and all eventually found themselves sent to a concentration camp [Therienstadt] when Austria was gobbled up by Germany during the Nazi's rise to power..as they did not possess "Imperial Status" Dont hear too much about this in any books. Eventually they were liberated by the Allies and their property restored to them. Sophie outlived both her younger brothers living to the ripe old age of 91. Her desendents live today in Konopiste; the Palace of Arch Duke Ferdinand and his wife Sophie Chotek.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Love story, mit schlag
Comment: There is an historical theory, or perhaps it is no more than a bon mot, that empires at the end of their power and political influence spend their last energies on a showy efflorescence, like a century plant. The prime examples would be 18th century Venice and early 20th century Vienna.
In "Thunder at Twilight," Frederic Morton presents a gossipy and apparently frothy portrait of such a bloom, told as a tragic love story. Like a good Mozart opera, there is a subsidiary, comic love story as well.
The tragic lovers are Franz Ferdinand, crown price of Austria-Hungary, and his wife, Sophie Chotek. Because Sophie was not royal, merely a countess, the archduke could not marry her as consort but only as a morganatic wife, and their children would not be in line for succession to the throne,
The comic lovers are Emperor Franz Joseph and the Widow Schratt, who also could not marry but who were so proper that they did not even make out.
The villain is Montenuevo, first court chamberlain, epitomizing the sclerotic empire that after rolling along for 800 years had almost seized its gears.
There is a huge supporting cast: Trotsky, Lenin and Stalin; Freud and Jung; the mad general Conrad von Hotzendorf and the crazed Serb Apis, etc. etc.
With an eye on the weather and the changes of seasons and in a flurry of adjectives, Morton leads them all toward a doom. This is one of the few reviews of the period that treats Franz Ferdinand as anything more than a stage prop.
In fact, in Morton's interpretation, the archduke is practically the only sensible man in the empire, full of fierce words masking a desperate attempt to keep Austria out of war with Russia. Sophie plays the calming influence who steadies her hotheaded lover.
Morton rightly calls Franz Ferdinand's policy appeasement of Serbia. It could never have worked. As we know from a further century of bitter experience, the South Slavs can neither govern themselves nor be governed
Conrad, though incompetent, was right. Serbia needed to be crushed. The problem was, Austria could not do it unless Russia stood aside; and Russia, another dying empire, was as full of aristocratic nitwits as Vienna, and had its own ungovernable Slavs (and Germans, like Lenin).
As hardcore history, "Thunder at Twilight" is too light, too consciously melodramatic. But it is great fun to read and seems to get the big picture more exactly right than more ponderous tomes.
Customer Rating:
Summary: More than 5 stars!
Comment: This is a favorite of mine, all the info about the Fin du siecle, Rudolph, and why we went into World War 1, and why some young people don't make it somehow!
Amazing and amazingly entertaining book, very very higly recommended. I dont have anything to add to the info of the book itself, go for the editorial reviews.
Customer Rating: 
Summary: A wonderful book
Comment: A college professor recommended this to me so I read it in about a day. It is very interesting how Morton weaves history into some sort of a novel that's very easy to read. Inspired by the death of his uncle in World War I, Morton writes about the history and the climax leading up to the very moment when the Crown Prince Francis Ferdinand and his wife Sophie were assassinated by a Serbian terrorist youth.Morton explains the nasty relationship with the Hapsburg Empire (that includes Austria) and the lower Slavic nations and the growing animosity between them. This is a great book for history buffs. My only complaints are that there aren't any citations in the book and that the friendship between Carl Jung and Sigmund Freud don't seem to have anything to do with the story itself.
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