THE LAST YEARS OF THE HABSBURG MONARCHY Hitler's Vienna: a dictator's apprenticeship. By Brigitte Hamann. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999. Pp. 512. ISBN 0-19-512537-1. £25.00. The undermining of Austria-Hungary: the battle for hearts and minds. By Mark Cornwall. Hampshire and London: Macmillan Press Ltd, 2000. Pp. 504. ISBN 0-333-80452-X. £57.50. The Habsburg Monarchy, c. 1765–1918: from enlightenment to eclipse. By Robin Okey. New York: St Martin's Press, 2001. Pp. 456. ISBN 0-312-23375-2. £55.50. The Jews of Vienna and the First World War. By David Rechter. London and Portland, OR: The Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2001. Pp. 232. ISBN 1-874774-65-X. £29.50. Reconstructing a national identity: the Jews of Habsburg Austria during World War I. By Marsha L. Rozenblit. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2001. Pp. 266. ISBN 0-19-513465-6. £47.50.

At least since Carl Schorske published Fin-de-siècle Vienna in 1981, the cultural explosion of Vienna 1900 has attracted the attention of scholars in many fields. Yet, the glittering imperial capital also incubated the Social Darwinian racist vision of Adolf Hitler, and Vienna's modern music, literature, and visual arts could not prevent the melting away of the Habsburg state at the close of the First World War. The five books under review explore the last years of the Habsburg Monarchy. The authors look beyond familiar topics, question basic scholarly assumptions, and provide fresh perspectives on the monarchy's final decade.