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1913. Léto Jednoho Století (2012)

by Florian Illies(Favorite Author)

3.73 of 5 Votes: 3

languge

English

genre

History & Biography

publisher

HOST

review 1: This book is full of fascinating tidbits from the year before World War I began including the fact that Adolf Hitler, Leon Trotsky, Joseph Tito, Sigmund Freud, Joseph Stalin and Emperor Franz Joseph all lived in Vienna at the same time. The book looks at the lives of a wide array of artists, philosophers, novelists, poets, composers, musicians, fashionistas, businessmen and even sports stars month by month in that significant year. Because it is written by a German you will find more detail in this book about what was going on in Vienna and Berlin and more on people such as Franz Kafka, Thomas Mann, Egon Schiele, Gustav Klimt, Oscar Kokoschka and Maria Rilke rather than Virginia Woolf and D H Lawrence but if you are into famous literary or artistic names and they did somet... morehing in that year I think you will find enough to satisfy your appetite. I was not interested in the date of birth of Willy Brandt or Burt Lancaster but the skirmishes between Freud and Jung, Picasso and Matisse on holiday together, the arguments between Gertrude and Leo Stein (with Alice B Toklas looking on), Kafka's 20 page marriage proposal to his girlfriend Felice, the audience's reaction to the Rite of Spring and Rilke's many women friends I found fascinating.
review 2: I hardly knew anything about the people Illies followed in this book, and for that reason it was a struggle to get through. What kept me going was the way it was written -- never dense, and always entertaining. Illies is a great researcher and writer who managed to bring the material to life with humorous and smart observations, who managed to keep a person totally ignorant on the subject alongside him throughout the book. less

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