Austria is a small country with a glorious history but a troubled past. It sits at the crossroads of central the furthest the Ottomans reached in the seventeenth century, a back-channel between east and west during the Cold War, and today a member of the European Union with its neutrality challenged by the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
In The Shortest History of Austria, Nicholas T. Parsons expertly tells the story of Austria from its origins at the outer reaches of the Roman Empire to its dominance of central Europe under the Habsburgs, and from the rebuilding of the republic after the devastation of World War II to the political tensions of today. As he ranges from the Romans to the Reformation, from the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand to the Anschluss, and from Mozart to Gustav Klimt to Harry Lime, Parsons reveals the drama of Austria's history – and the crucial role the country has played in the story of Europe. NICHOLAS T. PARSONS is a freelance author, translator and editor. A graduate of New College, Oxford he spent two years in Italy teaching at the British Institute of Florence and as Reader in English at the University of Pisa before returning to the UK to work in publishing for ten years in the 1970s and early 1980s. In 1984 he settled in Central Europe and has since published some 18 books on cultural topics, writing also as Louis James. These include the Blue Guide Austria and the Blue Guide Vienna as well as the first English guide to Hungary to be published following the “system change” of 1989. His essay-length Xenophobe’s Guide to the Austrians (Louis James) has been in print for 20 years. His more recent books are Worth the Detour: A History of the Guidebook from Pausanias to the Rough Guide; Vienna: A Cultural and Literary History and A New Devil’s Dictionary, which updates Ambrose Bierce’s satirical take on disingenuous language. In 2019 he published Civilisation and Its Malcontents: Essays on Our Times and Democracy: A Narrative from Aristotle to Trump (2023). Nicholas T. Parsons regards Austria as a second home. |
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