Reviews - Vienna. How the City of Ideas Created the Modern World

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27 reviews for:

Vienna. How the City of Ideas Created the Modern World

This masterpiece of an intellectual history details the sociocultural and economic factors that made Vienna into one of the greatest intellectual hubs of the modern world and how the ideas born within this city shaped Western thought as intellectuals fled Nazism. What I appreciated most about this book is Cockett's focus on the conditions that give birth to intellectual traditions and his approach to tracing the influence of ideas throughout time and space.

garybarnes72's review against another edition

5.0

Phenomenal multi-disciplinary read about the talent which emanated from a city I truly love to visit. Will return later with a more comprehensive review.

leto_m's review against another edition

3.75

informative reflective medium-paced

pleidades's review against another edition

4.5

challenging informative reflective medium-paced

mr_moriarty's review against another edition

3.5

slow-paced

m_peacock's review

3.25

informative slow-paced

It's a good book that gets a bit wrapped around the axle of its ambitions. I learned a lot about inter-war Vienna ("Red Vienna") and all the different schools/circles/groups of economists/scientists/politicians/psychiatrists.... Indeed, in Part II, trying to cover all the players in Vienna and all the relationships between them, it at times degenerated into a eye-glazing parade of German last names. And in Part III, Crockett works hard to justify his subtitle that Vienna "Created the Modern World" by seemingly trying to tie every post-war economic, political, and management theory back to one of these Viennese.

It's a solid, well-researched book that overreached a bit and became a bit of a slog at the end.