The Fall of the House of Habsburg by Crankshaw, Edward - 1963

New York: The Viking Press, 1963. Hard Back. Very Good/Fair. 6 1/4" x 8 3/4. 459 Pages Indexed. Red boards with no defects noted and a faultless interior.Black and gold spine lettering and gold logo on front. Dust is jacket with unclipped price $7.50 is somewhat tattered and almost seperated at the spine. Thirty-eight illustrations. From Franz Josef's accession during the 1848 Revolution to his death on the verge of Austria's defeat in World War I, Crankshaw traces what went wrong with understanding clarity. He pictures an empire that was never a state but only an uneasy conglomeration of peoples held together by the personal power of the dynasty. He follows its shifting internal course and the balances of power in the world outside, in which Russia, F rance, England, Italy and the rising German Reich jockeyed for position. And he shows World War] as a senseless and futile sequel, leading only to a worsened world. The sweep of his political and social history is enlivened by vivid personalities: Franz Josef's famous ministers; some of his antagonists, including Bismarck and Napoleon III; nationalists such as Kossuth and Andrassy; his romantic and domineering mother; his beloved but estranged wife Elizabeth, stabbed by an assassin; Carlotta and his brothel Maximilian, lost to him on the mad Mexico adventure; his son Rudolph, dying with Marie Vetsera in the hunting lodge at Mayerling. Brilliant set pieces present the dramatic moments: social life in Vienna at the turn of the century; the battle of Magenta; the assassinations at Sarajevo, for example. But the outstanding portrait is of Franz Jose himself-in the end a scapegoat, an Atlas bearing the ills of his world, but beefore that a young Jove, a father-figure, the golden hope of his people.