Still, by the book’s end, readers are left wondering how exactly the Habsburgs pulled it all off. The Habsburgs: The Rise and Fall of a World Power By Martyn Rady Allen Lane 397pp 30 order from our bookshop The House of Habsburg has a plausible claim to having been the most successful ruling dynasty in world history.

I continue to research and write on Central European History. A leading expert on Central Europe, he is the author of The Habsburgs: To Rule the World, The Habsburg Empire: A Very Short Introduction, and other books on. Rady neglects in statecraft he more than makes up for in colorful pen portraits of Habsburg rulers and the artistic, scientific and cultural accomplishments of their reigns. Prof Martyn Rady Emeritus Professor SSEES UCL SLASH Research summary I joined SSEES in 1990 and am now retired. Students, scholars and the general reader will never find a better guide to Habsburg history Alan Sked, Times Literary Supplement In The Habsburgs, Martyn Rady.

Rady flies through the 20-year struggle with Napoleon and gives Franz Joseph’s wars with Italy and Prussia just a few sentences apiece. Rady can, in under 350 pages, cover everything from the division of the family’s lands in the Swiss Argau in 990 to the surrender of power in 1918 by Charles, the last Habsburg monarch, without sacrificing essential details or losing the reader’s attention, is a feat of both scholarship and storytelling. It’s a big task.Most historians have chosen to highlight some sliver of their story, but this volume takes it all in. Rady’s book can be seen as a kind of family portrait of the Habsburgs as rulers, schemers, dreamers and procreators. 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.

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