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The Habsburgs: Embodying Empire | 
 enlarge | Author: Andrew Wheatcroft
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Category: Book
List Price: £12.99
Buy New: £5.13
You Save: £7.86 (61%)
New (36) Used (16) from £1.97
Rating:  4 reviews
Sales Rank: 28488
Media: Paperback
Edition: New edition
Pages: 416
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.8
Dimensions (in): 7.6 x 5.2 x 1.3
ISBN: 0140236341
Dewey Decimal Number: 943
EAN: 9780140236347
ASIN: 0140236341
Publication Date: September 26, 1996
Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: Brand New Book direct from the publisher. Takes 7 business days to ship from New York. Usually delivered in 2 weeks.
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| Customer Reviews:
 A good, deep history of an amazing dynasty November 12, 2003
7 out of 7 found this review helpful
There's something here to delight any reader interested in European history, whether monarchist or republican. The Habsburg dynasty, sometime rulers of Austria, Germany, Spain, Tuscany and very briefly Mexico, were the consummate career monarchs. Wheatcroft's account deliberately ignores the large-scale events of European history, giving scant coverage to the three wars (Thirty Years, Spanish Succession, and First World War) which cost the dynasty so much of its power. Instead, he focusses on the characters of individual rulers, including some who are often overlooked, and on the iconography of the dynasty. Learn about the emperor Maximilian's literary works, the 'Plus Ultra' motto, and contemporary cartoons of the empress Maria Theresa. There are also some interesting details on Spanish culture in the inquisition era, one of the dynasty's times of infamy. The notes are almost a book in themselves, and well worth reading. The hardback edition has more pictures than the paperback, including colour plates and my favourite Habsburg picture, which shows the young Maria Theresa addressing sword-waving Hungarian diet members while holding her baby son. That said, the pictures in the paperback are good too. My only warning to readers is that they should have a dictionary of european history to hand, or some other source, to match up the wars and revolutions which Wheatcroft deliberately skirts around.
Insightful and fascinating May 8, 2002
Martul (Chicago, IL. (USA))
10 out of 13 found this review helpful
Dr. Wheatcroft, a multilingual specialist in european and ottoman medieval history, has finally published one of his most elaborated works. The Habsbursg is the result of over 30 years of research, visiting different places and reading most of the previous publications on this field. The novelty of this work lies on its explanation of Continental Europe's history through the history of a family. This book might be boring for somebody who doesn't understand that the history of a country is the history of their people, and in the middle age the most influential people in Europe were
the Habsburgs. This unique family had, during 1.000 years, a very characteristic fashion of behaving, because an individual able to track his / her origins for 40 straight generations till the deepest roots of Europe has a very special perspective of history and his / her role in it. Dr. Otto von Habsburg, European Deputy and living heir of this imperial dynasty, has worked all his live in order to re-discover the concept of Europe, the same ideal tracked by his familiy by means of the Holy Roman Empire. In conclusion, for everybody interested in discovering what is behind the ideal of Europe (and its symbols, like the EU's flag), this book will be extraordinarily interesting.
 positively boring January 28, 2002
Manuel Nunez
11 out of 16 found this review helpful
In spite of its misleading title, this is not a history book. It consists mainly of lengthy descriptions of paintings and sculptures glorifying the Habsburgs, without the benefit of illustrations, and a boring theory on what the author thinks about the Habsburg mentality. Occasional historial vignettes illuminate briefly an otherwise monumentally tedious book.
A complete disappointment May 26, 2000
23 out of 29 found this review helpful
Bearing in mind the fact that no book has ever before covered the entire Habsburg dynasty, one assumes that this book would make the effort to do so. Instead, this book tries to make a virtue of ignoring the major events and not telling the reader much about the lives of the major players. It prefers to concentrate on the art and architecture of the period and to construct a complicated mindset which the author claims to be one shared by all Habsburgs regardless of country of birth, upbringing and generation. In short, if you want a historical biography this is not the book for you. If you are interested in sets of descirptions of pictures you cannot see in the book combined with pyschobabble, then buy this book (off me, preferably so I don't have let it gather dust on my shelves!)
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