Austrians today often seem to believe that they have two histories. One is their republican present; the other, the centuries that their forebears spent as part of the multi-ethnic Habsburg Empire. Contemporary Austria is a fixture among Europe's democracies. Yet, it did not achieve this state easily: World War I, the unification with Germany in 1938, and World War II were catastrophes for Austria. In 1995, it became part of the European Union, and its government, culture, and egalitarian economy are far cries from the monarchical and highly stratified society of the old Empire. The second edition of the Historical Dictionary of Austria has been thoroughly updated and greatly expanded. Through its chronology, introductory essay, appendix, bibliography, and hundreds of cross-referenced dictionary entries, greater attention has been given to foreign affairs, economic institutions and policies, social issues, religion, and politics.

Historical Dictionary of Postwar German Literature is devoted to one of the most intriguing bodies of modern literature, that produced in the German language, whether from Germany, Austria, Switzerland or writers using German in other countries. The linguistic consanguinity of these locales notwithstanding, there are considerable variations in literary tenor and approach within each of them. This volume covers an extensive period of time, beginning in 1945 at what was called "zero hour" for German literature and proceeds through the remainder of the 20th century, concluding in 2008.

Straddling Europe and Asia, the Russian Federation is the largest country in the world and home to a panoply of religious and ethnic groups from the Muslim Tatars to the Buddhist Buryats. Over the past 40 years, Russia has experienced the most dramatic transformation of any modern state. The second edition of Historical Dictionary of the Russian Federation provides insight into this rapidly developing country. This volume includes coverage of pivotal movements, events, and persons in the late Soviet Union (1985-1991) and contemporary Russia (1991-present), This second edition of Historical Dictionary of the Russian Federation contains a chronology, an introduction, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has over 700 cross-referenced entries on important personalities, politics, economy, foreign relations, religion, and culture. This book is an excellent resource for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about Russia.

The second edition of Historical Dictionary of the Kurds greatly expands on the first edition through an updated chronology, an introductory essay, an expanded bibliography, maps, photos, and over 400 cross-referenced dictionary entries on significant persons, places, events, institutions, and aspects of culture, society, economy, and politics.

Vienna, 1889-1914, the jewel in the crown of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, a major cultural capital at the high period of European modernism. In this collection the contradictions of Vienna are explored in sixteen especially written articles which strike a unique balance between popular and lesser-known topics reflecting the mix of Vienna itself. Its great figures like Sigmund Freud, Robert Musil, and Arnold Schoenberg emerge within the context in which their innovations took shape. Its cabarets, feuilletons, philosophical trends, political factions, pedagogic experiments, and sexual mores are all treated in the pages of this interdisciplinary work.

This book is a detailed reference of the twentieth century struggles that were waged across and beyond the decaying Russian Empire at the end of the First World War, as tsarism and democratic alternatives to it collapsed and the world’s first Communist state, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, was born. At the same time, it is a necessary corrective to studies that have viewed events of the time as a unitary “Russian Civil War” that sprang from the Russian Revolution of 1917. Instead, it contributes to the ongoing process of integrating the civil wars into a “continuum of crises” that wracked the Russian Empire and its would-be successor states across a prolonged period. The Historical Dictionary of the Russian Civil Wars, 1916-1926 covers the history of this period through a chronology, an introductory essay, appendixes, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has almost 2,000 cross-referenced entries on individuals, political and governmental institutions and political parties, and military formations and concepts, as well as religion, art, film, propaganda, uniforms, and weaponry. This book is an excellent access point for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about the Russian Civil War.

For forty-three years, Francis I of Austria ruled a vast heterogenous Empire that came to dominate the continent of Europe. Ascending Charlemagne’s thousand-year throne of the Holy Roman Empire at the age of twenty-four on the unexpected death of his father, this scion of the ancient Habsburg dynasty became the first Emperor of Austria and for two years, the only Double Emperor in history. Both the father in law of Napoleon Bonaparte and his chief rival for dominance of the continent of Europe, Francis eventually led a coalition of nations to Paris in 1814 and sent Napoleon into exile. The exiled Napoleon’s only son and heir lived with his grandfather thereafter in Vienna until his tragic early death. Kings, ministers, generals and the glitterati of Europe gathered under his watchful eye at the Congress of Vienna to decide the fate of a continent in the wake of the Napoleonic Wars in which he played a pivotal role. The Congress saw the emergence of his new Austrian Empire as the most dominant power in continental Europe until long after his death twenty years later. A devoted husband, father and grandfather, his modest lifestyle and simple tastes that set the tone of the Biedermeier era concealed a complex and calculating ruler whose initial, cautious liberalism gradually evolved into a stoic conservatism. No other life-biography in English has been written about this mysterious but powerful figure of early 19th century Europe whom Metternich and Radetzky called their master.