![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Still, by the book’s end, readers are left wondering how exactly the Habsburgs pulled it all off. Martyn Rady recounts the story of Europe's greatest dynasty that ruled an empire, on which the sun never set, from Peru to the Philippines. 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. 'The Habsburgs is gripping, colorful, and dramatic but also concise, scholarly, and magisterial. 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. Martyn Rady is Masaryk professor of Central European history at University College London. 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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