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A Nervous Splendor by Frederic Morton

A Nervous Splendor

Vienna 1888-1889

By Frederic Morton

By Frederic Morton

Best Seller
Paperback $18.00

Oct 30, 1980 | 352 Pages

A Nervous Splendor by Frederic Morton
Paperback
Oct 30, 1980 | 352 Pages

Paperback
–

  • Paperback $18.00

    Oct 30, 1980 | 352 Pages

Buy the Paperback:

About A Nervous Splendor

On January 30, 1889, at the champagne-splashed hight of the Viennese Carnival, the handsome and charming Crown Prince Rudolf fired a revolver at his teenaged mistress and then himself. The two shots that rang out at Mayerling in the Vienna Woods echo still.

Frederic Morton, author of the bestselling Rothschilds, deftly tells the haunting story of the Prince and his city, where, in the span of only ten months, “the Western dream started to go wrong.” In Rudolf’s Vienna moved other young men with striking intellectual and artistic talents—and all as frustrated as the Prince. Among them were: young Sigmund Freud, Gustav Mahler, Theodor Herzl, Gustav Klimt, and the playwright Arthur Schnitzler, whose La Ronde was the great erotic drama of the fin de siecle. Morton studies these and other gifted young men, interweaving their fates with that of the doomed Prince and the entire city through to the eve of Easter, just after Rudolf’s body is lowered into its permanent sarcophagus and a son named Adolf Hitler is born to Frau Klara Hitler.

Also by Frederic Morton

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About Frederic Morton

Frederic Morton was born in Vienna. Author of The Rothschilds, which became a hit Broadway musical, Mr. Morton has also written several novels. His short fiction has appeared in Esquire, The Atlantic, Playboy, and Hudson Review, as well as in… More about Frederic Morton

Product Details

Category: European World History | Historical Figure Biographies & Memoirs

Paperback | $18.00
Published by Penguin Books
Oct 30, 1980 | 352 Pages | 5-1/16 x 7-3/4 | ISBN 9780140056679

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Inspired by Your Browsing History

Praise

“A remarkable and unusual slice of history.”
—Robert Kirsch, Los Angeles Times

“As lush, beguiling, and charming as an emperor’s waltz”
—Publisher’s Weekly

“1888/1889 is my favorite year in the life of ‘the imperial City,’ and Frederic Morton’s A Nervous Splendor is my favorite book about Vienna.”
—John Irving, author of The World According to Garp

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