 |
|
Title: The Red Prince: The Secret Lives of a Habsburg Archduke
ISBN: 0465002374
Author:
Timothy Snyder
Publicate Date: 2008-06-02
Publish: 2008-06-02
List Price: $27.95
Average Customer Rating: 4.0
Format: Hardcover
 |
|
|
|
|
Amazon Lowest New Price: $15.00
Amazon Lowest Used Price: $13.49
Amazon Merchant Price: $19.85
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| Customer Review: |
|
1: Interesting but a bit overlong
As one of the other reviewers wrote, this book is perhaps too long for the material that it covers. Certain ideas and phrases end up being repeated over and over and over again. On the other hand, I wanted to learn more about a minor branch of the Habsburg family, one that had been involved in politics in Poland and the Ukraine for much of the 19th and 20th centuries. This book provided excellent material on that family. Some of the more negative reviews say that the book is too nostalgic for the Habsburg era and idealizes the members of this minor branch of the imperial family. I agree to an extent, but I don't see that a slight bias toward extending the family the benefit of the doubt undermines the historical information and interpretation of the entire book. This is one perspective in the history of this branch of the Habsburg clan. If others disagree with how this perspective sees the family, then they should write their own books with other perspectives. Then we'll have a richer, rounder history. Until then, this is a good look at an interesting family. Americans generally know too little about the Habsburgs, east central Europe, and pre-World War II history. They can learn something from this book.
|
2: overly long and rudderless
This book has two big problems. The first is that the subject of the book isn't worth a book of this length and depth. The second is that the author often "makes good" the lack of depth in the subject by speculation and theory.
Wilhelm von Habsburg was never a figure of consequence. A mnior member of the imperial family, he kept himself busy in Imperial Austria by funding nationalist ukranian groups working apparantly toward the delusion that he could make a throne for himself outside Austria.
After the fall of Habsburg Austria, he became a professional political opportunist attaching himself to anyone in Europe who wanted him. His personal life was a scandalous mess and he spent his final days in a soviet prison.
The author and the work far too often invented excuses for Wilhelm. But sometimes a lowlife political opportunist is no more than that. The author never quite wants to admit That Wilhelm didn't believe in anything except using everything and everyone around him to get himself ahead.
In some ways, Wilhelm toward the end was the third man's Harry Lime come to life. An amoral preditor playing on the cold war border who like Lime pressed his luck until it ran out.
The book might have worked either at about 1/3rd of its length. Or it might have worked had the history of eastern europe it contains been pulled out. As it is, its a mess. The craft of the writing and research involved are both excellent but they can't save what was a very flawed idea for a book.
The final mistake of the author is to repeat the old nonsense that the EU is some sort of return to Habsburg ideals. People who say such things have little understanding of how Imperial Austria was governed and are usually caught up in daydreams of Vienna at the turn of the century.
|
3: Delightful Introduction to Central European History
This is one of those books that you pick up on a whim and then the next day wonder why on earth you bought it, and then, once you begin to read it, realize that you got lucky. The Red Prince, in actuality, is several books in one: a biography of the eccentric Archduke Wilhelm von Hapsburg and members of his family, a brief history of the evolution of the country we know today as Ukraine, a eulogy for the Hapsburg Empire, and a survey of the changes wrought in Europe during the 19th and 20th Centuries as nations became states and continental war gave way to European union. Professor Snyder has a fascinating story to tell and he tells it well. His prose is engaging, his analysis insightful, and his arguments persuasive. At times, his metaphors are a bit over wrought and strained. For example, his reference on p. 272 to the impact that global warming and rising water levels in the Adriatic Sea will have on old Hapsburg sea charts seems pointless, other than perhaps satisfying the author's desire to display his awareness of the environmental fad du jour. But this is a minor quibble. If you want to fill a gap in your education and learn a little something about Central Europe, buy this book.
|
4: Hapless Habsurgs
To me this book, which aims at explaining the evolution of political boundaries in Eastern Europe over the past 100 years, is muddled as a result of the author's use of a particularly mobile and feckless archduke of the Habsburg line for the connecting thread of his main, and more serious, history.
I think Professor Snyder goes overboard in his admiration for the ill-fated Habsburgs, especially Wihelm. All things seem to be taken in the most positive light and excused, such as Wihelm's involvement in a lurid financial shakedown scandal in France and his early friendship with the Nazis. Facts easily drift into conjecture at many points, especially with the material related to the thoughts and motives of the Red Prince.
I see nothing to admire in Wihelm nor do I think it any bad thing that this collection of rich, indolent, hereditary rulers, known as the Habsburg Dynasty, is no longer.
Professor Snyder, who is a real expert on issues related to the politics of this area of the world, would have been better off telling his story directly and not by means of the ignoble life of this one archduke.
|
5: Habsburg nostalgia with a twist
Many of us are nostalgic about the Hababurgs, especially when we have considered the awful consequences of the decline of a multinational empire which kept squabbling nationalities and would-be-nationalities from murdering one another for many decades. Of course the Habsburgs also bear resp0nsibility for a policy of divide and conquer which made nationalistic rivalries even worse. But still better a Habsburg ruler than a Fascist or a Communist.
Prof. Snyder, an expert on the nationalities question in the lands of central Europe and the Old Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, is the perfect man to write a book on a wayward Habsburg archduke, Wilhelm, and his involvement for several decades in pro-Ukrainian national projects, all of which came to nothing until long after his death with the demise of the Soviet Union in 1989-91.
Snyder writes with a literary verve which makes it hard to put this book down, even for people who wouldn't know the difference between a Slovak and a Slovene if their lives depended on it.
|
|
|
|
|
