The history of a powerful family dynasty who dominated Europe for centuries, from their rise to power to their eventual downfall.
What The Reviewers Say
Paul Lay,
The Sunday Times (UK)
Although he gives the more familiar Spanish Habsburgs their due in this riveting study, Martyn Rady rightly restores the primacy of central Europe to the dynasty, which, born of modest roots in Switzerland and Swabia, became Holy Roman Emperors in 1452.
JULIAN GLOVER,
The Evening Standard (UK)
... deeply informed, elegantly written and a joy to read. It also shows the Habsburg world to have been even more bonkers than I had thought.
JOHN ADAMSON,
The Literary Review (UK)
... [Rady] has produced a Rolls-Royce of a narrative that motors through ten centuries of history with an effortlessness that belies the intellectual horsepower beneath the bonnet.
A. Wess Mitchell,
The Wall Street Journal
Mr. 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.