Morton's narrative does require the reader to have a bit of context about Austrian, and
broader European, history. But even for the reader without this grounding, there's much here to
appreciate. While he does seem to take author's liberties sometimes -- how can we really know all
Crown Prince Rudolf was thinking in his final days? -- the image he paints of a crumbling society
held together by gilt and glitter is remarkable. So too are the individual portraits: Rudolf, his
father the Emperor, Freud, Klimt, Mahler, Brahms, and many more. There were many strains of genius
at work in Vienna in 1889, building a new world under the looming threat of the old world's
collapse, and Frederic Morton captures them.

The late Austrian author Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn
once noted that World Wars I and II could properly be termed the second War of Austrian Succession,
and that the most important long-term consequence of the First World War was the destruction of the
Austro-Hungarian Empire. Churchill, too, argued that it was the collapse of the Central European
thrones that allowed the "Hitlerite monster" -- an Austrian monster Morton foreshadows in this book
-- to crawl to power in the 1930s. In more ways than most of us appreciate, we still live in a world
with deep roots in Old Vienna. Frederic Morton's interesting and insightful portrait of a key moment
in that city's history illuminates both that era and ours in a fascinating new way. It's a book that
will reward more than one reading.

The
limitations paid off, however, mainly because Morton's selection of those few months enable him to
cover a highly significant moment of Austrian history, but also to bring in a cast of characters
that would normally have been only peripheral to the usual story of history. The reader, thus, gets
a sense of not only the political tenor of the times, but also an insight into the medical (through
the description of a young Sigmund Freud), the literary (Theodor Herzl and Arthur Schnitzler), the
musical (Johannes Brahams and Anton Bruckner), the artistry (Gustav Klimt), and the everyday (a
street-player known as the King of Birds). History is not a novel, so these lives do not intertwine
as they would in a fiction, but each does bring an expanded understanding of what Vienna was
like.

The central "story" to the book is Crown Prince Rudolf and his frustration with being heir
to the Austrian empire with nothing to do except ceremonial duties. Morton depicts Rudolf as a
freethinker who might have changed the course of history had it not been for Emperor Franz Joseph's
wonderful health. Instead, Rudolf, in the course of nine months, goes from being a revolutionary who
must have his writing published under someone else's name to a drug-addled conspirator, who, with
his nubile, fashion-setting mistress, decides to commit double-suicide. The tragedy is heir-apparent
(pause for groans to subside), as Rudolf would have likely been much more palatable to the subjects
of Sarajevo than Franz Ferdinand.

I must admit to being fairly ignorant of European history (okay,
I was schooled in America--I'm pretty ignorant of history, per se), so when Morton drops the fact
halfway through A Nervous Splendor that Rudolf commits suicide, I was surprised. But such is the
difference between history and fiction. Morton expects the reader to already be aware of the high
points in his narrative, and seeks to illustrate the base of those icebergs (this is also why I
don't feel guilty for discussing the suicide myself). He succeeds, and I now am quite interested in
his follow-up to this book, a volume called Thunder at Twilight which depicts Austria right before
World War I.

What I found to be the most interesting is the chapters on the Crown Prince Rudolf: the
liberal-minded heir to the Austrian throne. The progressive Crown Prince was stifled by the
traditions of the court. He was forced to entertain guests he did not like (such as Kaiser Wilhelm
II) and was only able to voice his ideas through unsigned articles in a newspaper. His choice of
the Mayerling incident to solve his problems still seems odd for an intelligent, 30 year-old prince.
His choice of taking Mary Vetsera with him seems more for convenience than for some love tragedy as
she was willing to go along with his plan whereas his regular mistress laughed it off. For an
alternative view on the Crown Prince's demise, I recommend a book entitled The Mayerling Murder.

Morton's account of the aftermath of Mayerling was very interesting (the rise in the stock market
and the foreign gossip pages lent out by cab drivers). The real impact of Mayerling may not have
had as much impact on history as one might expect, especially since Franz Joseph lived until the
midpoint of World War I. Considering the years and the nation covered, the ending is very
predictable (I guessed it before I started reading the book).

Morton focuses his analysis around the death by suicide pact of
Kronprinz Rudolph, heir to the Hapsburg empire. The event is intrinsically intriging; Rudolph's
suicide and it's aftermath cover an emotional landscape that ranges from the tragic to the bizarre
and goulish.

Vignettes in the life of important cultural figures, including Freud, Herzl, Klimt,
Brahms, Bruckner, Schnitzler and Mahler, dramatize the trend toward the dissolution of conservatism
and the collapse of upper classs domination.

A NERVOUS SPLENDOR is entertaining, informative and
well written. Morton's style of writting is sophisticated, elegant and, yet, in a sense that is
hard to define, unusual and piquant.