A History of the Habsburg Empire, 1526-1918:

by Robert A. Kann

Book Overview

"An impressive achievement in a task of extraordinary difficulty...The outstanding asset of this work does not consist in in its comprehensiveness and objectivity, however, nor even in the wide knowledge and special expertise Kann can bring to bear from his early legal training, his formidable scholarship on the nationalities question, and his keen critical appreciation of the diverse cultures of the monarchy. Its greatest merit derives from the author's determination always to ask fundamental questions, his care to discriminate between surface phenomena and deeper causes, his skill in finding significant patterns in an apparently chaotic welter of events, his facility for perceptive and penetrating distinctions and generalizations. In short, he tried with considerable success to tell what really happened in history rather than simply what obviously happened."-- Canadian Historical Review

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0520024087
• ISBN13: 9780520024083
• Release Date: November 1974
• Publisher: University of California Press
• Length: 664 Pages
• Weight: 2.39 lbs.

Customer Reviews

highly detailed

a bit too , highly detailed , for someone with prior knowledge of the subject , with lots reading time. will read some day when I have lots of time .

An Excellent General History of the Habsburgs

Robert Kann was a Viennese Professor of History who taught at several American universities during his career. He was a recognized authority in his field, and this volume is one of the very best general histories of the Habsburg Monarchy currently in print. However, it was written in Professor Kann's second language, English; so the reading is choppy at times. In addition, the subject matter is extremely complex; so if you are expecting a page-turner, this may not be for you. Overall, if you want to know about the last 400 years of the Habsburgs, there are few better sources.

interesting

I enjoyed reading the book. It gave me a good feeling for continental diplomatic history, a subject many americans dont know having focussed on the american revolution. I found it to be scholastically refined. It can be considered a good source for the origins and causes of WWI (and consequently the current yugoslav question). Criticisms might include a Hegelian like grammatical structure, as well as a lack of introduction to terms; there is no front porch on this book. There are also a number of misprints.