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Vienna

How the City of Ideas Created the Modern World

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How can one European capital be responsible for most of the West's intellectual and cultural achievements in the twentieth century?

Viennese ideas saturate the modern world. From California architecture to Hollywood Westerns, modern advertising to shopping malls, orgasms to gender confirmation surgery, nuclear fission to fitted kitchens—every aspect of our history, science, and culture is in some way shaped by Vienna.

The city of Freud, Wittgenstein, Mahler, and Klimt was the melting pot at the heart of a vast metropolitan empire. But with the Second World War and the rise of fascism, the dazzling coteries of thinkers who squabbled, debated, and called Vienna home dispersed across the world, where their ideas continued to have profound impact.

Richard Cockett gives us the entirety of this extraordinary story. Tracing Vienna's rich intellectual history from psychoanalysis to Reaganomics, Cockett encompasses everything from the communist rebels of Red Vienna to the neoliberal economists of the Austrian School. This is the panoramic account of how one city made the modern world—and how we all remain inescapably Viennese.

©2023 Richard Cockett (P)2023 Tantor 20th Century Economic History Economics Europe Modern Sociology Urban Socialism Capitalism Colonial Period Middle Ages
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What was overwhelmingly disturbing for ne however was that the narrator was unable to pronounce any German words, names or titles. It grated on my nerves as a native speaker and took away the pleasure of listening - I’ve bought the hard cover now so will read that instead.

Book was excellent covering a myriad of cultural, social and historical topics

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This is an interesting book on why Vienna was such an important place about a hundred years ago. It covers almost everything from politics and economics to art and design.

However, the narration was terrible. The narrator clearly doesn't speak any German and keeps mispronouncing all the German names, words and phrases. It's very annoying, especially how he butchers Ringstraße despite the word coming up around a hundred times in the book. So I recommend reading a physical copy instead.

Great book, terrible narration

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The work is impressive in range and coverage, spoiled by the constant mispronunciation of almost every non-English term and name. This appears to be a feature of Audible recordings - perhaps it would be good to tutor narrators on pronunciation?

Excellent content, frustrating performance

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I think the story / content is wonderful but I stopped listening after 45 minutes as the way the reader of this book mispronounces namesake words is giving me the ick. truly awful!!

Reader can't pronounce German properly and it's highly annoying

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