If the Habsburgs could last for a millennium, surely a constitutional republic can."- Wall Street Journal In an era of schisms, America needs a unifying idea of itself as something greater than the sum of its parts. It's not hard to see current parallels to this story. "A feat of both scholarship and storytelling. The Habsburgs is the definitive history of a remarkable dynasty that forever changed Europe and the world. But Rady reveals their enduring power, driven by the belief that they were destined to rule the world as defenders of the Roman Catholic Church, guarantors of peace, and patrons of learning. Historians often depict the Habsburgs as leaders of a ramshackle empire. The Habsburgs continued to dominate Central Europe through the First World War.
Then, in just a few decades, their possessions rapidly expanded to take in a large part of Europe, stretching from Hungary to Spain, and parts of the New World and the Far East. From modest origins, the Habsburgs gained control of the Holy Roman Empire in the fifteenth century. In The Habsburgs, Martyn Rady tells the epic story of a dynasty and the world it built - and then lost - over nearly a millennium.
Still, by the book’s end, readers are left wondering how exactly the Habsburgs pulled it all off.The definitive history of a powerful family dynasty who dominated Europe for centuries - from their rise to power to their eventual downfall. Rady neglects in statecraft he more than makes up for in colorful pen portraits of Habsburg rulers and the artistic, scientific and cultural accomplishments of their reigns.
Rady flies through the 20-year struggle with Napoleon and gives Franz Joseph’s wars with Italy and Prussia just a few sentences apiece. Rady can, in under 350 pages, cover everything from the division of the family’s lands in the Swiss Argau in 990 to the surrender of power in 1918 by Charles, the last Habsburg monarch, without sacrificing essential details or losing the reader’s attention, is a feat of both scholarship and storytelling. It’s a big task.Most historians have chosen to highlight some sliver of their story, but this volume takes it all in. Rady’s book can be seen as a kind of family portrait of the Habsburgs as rulers, schemers, dreamers and procreators. Rady adds to a growing body of research challenging the conventional view of Habsburg rulers as 'gaolers of nations' who suppressed the vitality of the cultures they governed.
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