What do you think?
Rate this book
Vienna: How the City of Ideas Created the Modern World
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.
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.
464 pages, Paperback
Published September 17, 2024
About the author
Richard Cockett
11 books27 followersRichard Cockett is Southeast Asia editor and correspondent at The Economist. He is the author of several books, the most recent being Sudan: Darfur and the Failure of an African State. He lives in London.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 80 reviews
December 9, 2023
Really interesting history of some of the major figures to come from 20th century Vienna. It discusses the Vienna Circle, which isn't so easy to describe. There were lots of "Vienna Circles", or groups of people that got together to discuss philosophy, physics, economics, etc. But there was an enormous and incredibly important group of thinkers that spurred or inspired a huge amount of what has become inherent to our western experience. From Ernst Mach, Otto Neurath, Freud, Buhler, Neutra & Gruen for architecture and malls, Billy Wilder and others in Hollywood, Karl Popper, Hayek, John von Neumann, Wittgenstein, Polanyi, Peter Drucker, the list goes on and on.
This book is mainly making the point and drawing the connections from early 1900s Vienna to the major impacts and schools of thought that still have a big impact on us. From advertising, architecture, economics, philosophy, business, movies, and more. This is a great introduction to the period and the people.
This book is mainly making the point and drawing the connections from early 1900s Vienna to the major impacts and schools of thought that still have a big impact on us. From advertising, architecture, economics, philosophy, business, movies, and more. This is a great introduction to the period and the people.
March 14, 2025
A better title would have been "The Viennese," as this is a book about the big names that came out of Vienna (and there were quite a few) rather than about the city itself. The latter half especially focuses on Viennese exiles (mostly to America, some to Britain) and begins to feel less and less about the Austrian capital as it goes on. Still, it's an interesting perspective from a city of flourishing pluralism that descended into Nazism. 3.5 stars, rounded up.
February 28, 2026
interesting and very well written book about the influence of early 20 century Viennese on world thinking. actually much more readable than that sounds both about the history of Vienna and the wide ranging fields of thought and endeavour that it covers.
January 3, 2024
This book is very ambitious in scope. It is well written and its fewer than 400 pages go by very quickly.
It never lingers to describe things in the detail they might require. This works somewhat to give an overview of the political context and Viennese intellectual climate. It works less well to describe the particular strands of thought and their consequences.
In many areas, the author relies too heavily on popular biographies and too little on the works of the figures covered. This contributes to the superficiality which is the primary weakness of this book.
A secondary weakness is the authors over-reliance on politics as an explanatory device. Politics were no doubt extremely important, but in many places it was over-used, one suspects, almost as a cover for glosses over complex arguments.
It never lingers to describe things in the detail they might require. This works somewhat to give an overview of the political context and Viennese intellectual climate. It works less well to describe the particular strands of thought and their consequences.
In many areas, the author relies too heavily on popular biographies and too little on the works of the figures covered. This contributes to the superficiality which is the primary weakness of this book.
A secondary weakness is the authors over-reliance on politics as an explanatory device. Politics were no doubt extremely important, but in many places it was over-used, one suspects, almost as a cover for glosses over complex arguments.
February 21, 2024
This is a rich history of ideas emanating from Vienna from the late 19th century to the present. Cockett presents a parade of thumbnail sketches of Viennese “influencers” both well-known and obscure, and ties it all together with a comprehensive narrative of the fortunes and misfortunes of Vienna in the 20th century.
Largely a story of those who left Vienna in the 1930s under the Nazi threat and found new lives in the UK or the USA, these émigrés made more of a splash in their new environments than they would have if Europe had not suffered the devastation of the second world war and they had been able to remain in Austria. In the post-war West, their talents found new vistas with immense consequences for all of us. From Freud and psychoanalysis, Wittgenstein and philosophy, Schoenberg and atonality to lesser-known figures who bestowed upon us the shopping mall, the focus group, the fitted kitchen and Mar-a-Lago, the Viennese were at the center of innovation throughout the twentieth century.
Cockett traces much of the vigor of Viennese thought to a single pioneering academic, Ernst Mach, a physicist who used his chair of philosophy at the University of Vienna to wage war “against the metaphysics of German idealism” in favor of an empirical and scientific approach to, well, everything. He influenced a whole generation, not only scientists, but writers like Robert Musil, Arthur Schnitzler and Hugo von Hofmannsthal. Subsequent cohorts of Viennese thinkers were also doers, rooted in a world of action, creating wide-ranging social programs during the interwar years known as “Red Vienna.” Those who were fortunate to escape the Nazis brought their skills and entrepreneurship to the West.
Not all the Viennese contributions were salutary: Cockett tells the thrilling but sickening story of British spies Kim Philby and others in the Cambridge Five, recruited by the mesmerizing Arnold Deutsch and his accomplice Edith Suschitzky to infiltrate the highest reaches of British intelligence and research in order to convey state secrets to the Communists. They were instrumental in giving the Soviet Union the information necessary to build the atomic bomb, and Philby “betrayed hundreds of operatives working behind the Iron Curtain, condemning many of them to death.” Deutsch, who held a doctorate in chemistry from the University of Vienna and had an extensive background in psychology, posed as an academic researcher in Britain, where “[h]is modus operandi…was to trawl through the country’s leading universities for the best communist undergraduates and then cultivate them as long-term penetration agents in the corridors of powers.”
Cockett is a senior editor at The Economist, and he saves the most consequential material for the end of this book, the influence of the Austrian school of economics and their allies in related fields, especially Friedrich Hayek, Ludwig von Mises, and Karl Popper (in philosophy). As a complete layperson in economics, I read this section with close attention but probably not as much comprehension. I would have to read more books on the subject to have any real knowledge, but already in the present book I sense that Cockett is reluctant to criticize the Austrian school. Since these Austrians provided the theoretical background for the economic policies of Reagan and Thatcher, and since those policies contributed to the increasing disparity between the rich and the poor that bedevils the current world, I think there must be substantial criticisms to be made, that I would be interested to hear. But that will be through the lens of another writer in another book.
In the meantime, this book provides insights about not only Vienna, but modern history generally. The author handles complex subjects with a supple and entertaining style, never writing down to the reader, engaging with the personalities and the ideas that truly have created the modern world.
Largely a story of those who left Vienna in the 1930s under the Nazi threat and found new lives in the UK or the USA, these émigrés made more of a splash in their new environments than they would have if Europe had not suffered the devastation of the second world war and they had been able to remain in Austria. In the post-war West, their talents found new vistas with immense consequences for all of us. From Freud and psychoanalysis, Wittgenstein and philosophy, Schoenberg and atonality to lesser-known figures who bestowed upon us the shopping mall, the focus group, the fitted kitchen and Mar-a-Lago, the Viennese were at the center of innovation throughout the twentieth century.
Cockett traces much of the vigor of Viennese thought to a single pioneering academic, Ernst Mach, a physicist who used his chair of philosophy at the University of Vienna to wage war “against the metaphysics of German idealism” in favor of an empirical and scientific approach to, well, everything. He influenced a whole generation, not only scientists, but writers like Robert Musil, Arthur Schnitzler and Hugo von Hofmannsthal. Subsequent cohorts of Viennese thinkers were also doers, rooted in a world of action, creating wide-ranging social programs during the interwar years known as “Red Vienna.” Those who were fortunate to escape the Nazis brought their skills and entrepreneurship to the West.
Not all the Viennese contributions were salutary: Cockett tells the thrilling but sickening story of British spies Kim Philby and others in the Cambridge Five, recruited by the mesmerizing Arnold Deutsch and his accomplice Edith Suschitzky to infiltrate the highest reaches of British intelligence and research in order to convey state secrets to the Communists. They were instrumental in giving the Soviet Union the information necessary to build the atomic bomb, and Philby “betrayed hundreds of operatives working behind the Iron Curtain, condemning many of them to death.” Deutsch, who held a doctorate in chemistry from the University of Vienna and had an extensive background in psychology, posed as an academic researcher in Britain, where “[h]is modus operandi…was to trawl through the country’s leading universities for the best communist undergraduates and then cultivate them as long-term penetration agents in the corridors of powers.”
Cockett is a senior editor at The Economist, and he saves the most consequential material for the end of this book, the influence of the Austrian school of economics and their allies in related fields, especially Friedrich Hayek, Ludwig von Mises, and Karl Popper (in philosophy). As a complete layperson in economics, I read this section with close attention but probably not as much comprehension. I would have to read more books on the subject to have any real knowledge, but already in the present book I sense that Cockett is reluctant to criticize the Austrian school. Since these Austrians provided the theoretical background for the economic policies of Reagan and Thatcher, and since those policies contributed to the increasing disparity between the rich and the poor that bedevils the current world, I think there must be substantial criticisms to be made, that I would be interested to hear. But that will be through the lens of another writer in another book.
In the meantime, this book provides insights about not only Vienna, but modern history generally. The author handles complex subjects with a supple and entertaining style, never writing down to the reader, engaging with the personalities and the ideas that truly have created the modern world.
April 13, 2025
Lots of very interesting accounts of people and ideas, but I think it falls down in two ways. First, its incredible breadth means there are few readers that will find the whole book engaging, and second, sometimes it fails to convince that its character's actions (particularly in the post-Vienna expat chapters) were linked fundamentally to Viennese ideas/culture, which weakness the overall thesis.
May 17, 2026
I tried listening to this and it was so boring. Did not pull me in at all. I kept trying to focus on it and my mind would immediately start wandering. I listened to 1.5 hours and honestly don’t remember anything. Fortunately I got it on an Audible sale for only a couple bucks.
Luckily I found another book I could use for Austria in my “Read the World” project called The World of Yesterday written by Stefan Zweig. He lived in Austria during WWI and the start of WWII. He died in 1942 I listened to the beginning and it was compelling so I used one of my precious Audible credits and got it. So far I’m really enjoying it.
Luckily I found another book I could use for Austria in my “Read the World” project called The World of Yesterday written by Stefan Zweig. He lived in Austria during WWI and the start of WWII. He died in 1942 I listened to the beginning and it was compelling so I used one of my precious Audible credits and got it. So far I’m really enjoying it.
May 12, 2025
Probably one, if not the, best non-fiction book I've ever read. R. Chockett makes it so increadibly entertaining to dive into this book, because he just keeps on delivering on the countless examples of Viennese scientists, artists, politicians and, above all, children of Red Vienna that shaped the modern world in ways that often remain unsung. Hayek, Loos, Neurath, Lorenz, Kammerer, Meitner, Bühler, Wilder, Lamarr, Wittgenstein, Popper - most probably know, or at least heard of them, in an individual context. But seeing all of them having emerged or at the least having been significantly influenced by these few one-of-a-kind decades in Vienna in a condensed form shed's, at least for me, a new light on this pre-WW2 era. A truly remarkable piece of non-fiction about a truly remarkable period of a, to this day, remarkable city. 5/5
April 24, 2025
A cultural survey with some social and political context but little analysis or historiography.
July 4, 2026
Richard Cocket is a magnificent narrator. After reading this – very well researched – book, I am indeed convinced that anything in the world, may it be economics, malls, science, and, sadly, antisemitism and national socialism, was brought up by Viennese. Yet the melting pot of the Austro-Hungarian Habsburg Empire and especially the snobby upper-middle class salon culture embraced the brightest community the history of science has ever seen. Where composers like Brahms or Schubert, painters like Klimt, philosophers like Wittgenstein and Schnitzler, physicists like Mach, Boltzmann or Doppler, physicians like Barany (the founder of ENT) or Zuckerkandl and – the infamous – Sigmund Freud lingered around and exchanged on an incredibly wide array of topics. No coincidence that Klimt‘s paintings contain accurate histological drawings if human Blastocytes. If you are Viennese, you shoud read this book; even though the chapter regarding modern economics is a bit dry
April 6, 2026
Das Buch ist durchaus interessant und informativ. Manche Kapitel finde ich persönlich ansprechender als andere. Alles in allem ist es sehr ausführlich, dadurch auch an manchen Strecken sehr zäh zu lesen.
January 13, 2026
Un libro fallido desde su propio planteamiento. La premisa de la que se deriva todo el estudio es que pensadores de la ciudad de Viena han contribuido de una manera decisiva a conformar el mundo tal y como lo conocemos hoy. Por ello, en vez de limitarse a describir en profundidad el ambiente social, político o intelectual que permitió la existencia de figuras titánicas como Ludwig Wittgenstein, Karl Polanyi u Otto Weininger -o a narrar la evolución intelectual que ha ido experimentando Viena desde su esplendor a finales del siglo XIX hasta la menos productiva actualidad-, Richard Cockett se enzarza en discusiones embarradas sobre el insospechado origen vienés del estudio de mercado, el centro comercial o el neoliberalismo. Uno termina el libro con la sensación de que se trata más de una introducción superflua a la Escuela Austríaca y sus debates que de un monográfico sobre Viena. Así, la primera parte del libro, que sitúa al lector en el contexto de todo lo que sigue, reseñando la importancia de la diversidad cultural del Imperio Austrohúngaro o la modernización de su infraestructura, es prácticamente lo único salvable de todo el texto, que acaba resultando difícil de leer por la dispersión de un autor que abarca mucho más de lo que aprieta. Muy decepcionante.
November 6, 2025
Turint omeny, kad persikrausčiau gyevnti į Viena, labai džiaugiuosi, kad ši knyga atsirado. Nes prieš ją man siūlė skaityti istorinius rankraščius ar turistinius gidus tam, kad geriau susipažinčiau su miestu.
Labai smagi išdėstyta, kad vieniečiai maišė skirtingas mokslo ir meno šakas, ir iš to gaudavo nuostabiausių rezultatų.
Ypač įdomu buvo skaityti apie miesto vietas, kurias pražįstu ir apie jo žmonės ne iš ekonomikos ir politikos sričių, nes ten jau pasimečiau, nes nieko neišmanau.
Knygos gale susidarė įspūdis, kad viską, nuo Wikipedijos iki Trumpo, iki globalinės ekonomikos sukūrė vieniečiai, tai atrodė šmaikštu, bet išties įspūdingos apimties tyrimas padarytas tokiai nedideliai ir didžiąja dalimi lengvai skaitomai knygai.
Labai smagi išdėstyta, kad vieniečiai maišė skirtingas mokslo ir meno šakas, ir iš to gaudavo nuostabiausių rezultatų.
Ypač įdomu buvo skaityti apie miesto vietas, kurias pražįstu ir apie jo žmonės ne iš ekonomikos ir politikos sričių, nes ten jau pasimečiau, nes nieko neišmanau.
Knygos gale susidarė įspūdis, kad viską, nuo Wikipedijos iki Trumpo, iki globalinės ekonomikos sukūrė vieniečiai, tai atrodė šmaikštu, bet išties įspūdingos apimties tyrimas padarytas tokiai nedideliai ir didžiąja dalimi lengvai skaitomai knygai.
March 21, 2026
Un compañero me regaló este libro después de que comentáramos lo interesante que había sido la clase magistral (lecture) que Cockett había dado en nuestro instituto. Dado lo que se dijo me parecía un indispensable, viviendo en Viena y teniendo interés por la historia de la cultura de la ciudad.
La pena es, y coincido con algunos de los comentarios de otros lectores, que salvo la introducción a la sociedad vienesa de principios de siglo, la Viena roja y la cultura de la universidad y los privatdozent, y algún otro capítulo suelto por el medio del libro (introducción a la mujer en la universidad, campañas publicitarias, arquitectura,...), la lectura consiste en una enumeración de ideas, personas e invenciones de alguna manera relacionadas con Viena pero sin indagar mucho en la trascendencia de los personajes o las ideas ni en su relación con la capital austríaca.
La pena es, y coincido con algunos de los comentarios de otros lectores, que salvo la introducción a la sociedad vienesa de principios de siglo, la Viena roja y la cultura de la universidad y los privatdozent, y algún otro capítulo suelto por el medio del libro (introducción a la mujer en la universidad, campañas publicitarias, arquitectura,...), la lectura consiste en una enumeración de ideas, personas e invenciones de alguna manera relacionadas con Viena pero sin indagar mucho en la trascendencia de los personajes o las ideas ni en su relación con la capital austríaca.
December 5, 2024
This was a good read, but a slog. I lost my enthusiasm after page 350.
October 30, 2025
Superb, a truly remarkable piece of non-fiction.
September 21, 2024
an amazing history of ideas springing from the casual encounters only possible in a large multicultural city!
What a wonderful book! The author is able to survey the fertile ideas of hundreds of thinkers and activists often opposed to each other, without being biased and taking sides! Crockett discuss and explains clearly the ideas behind Red Vienna and the Mont Pèlerin Society without taking sides! This is a masterpiece illustrating the fertility of a large city under a benign government!
What a wonderful book! The author is able to survey the fertile ideas of hundreds of thinkers and activists often opposed to each other, without being biased and taking sides! Crockett discuss and explains clearly the ideas behind Red Vienna and the Mont Pèlerin Society without taking sides! This is a masterpiece illustrating the fertility of a large city under a benign government!
October 6, 2024
An absolutely fascinating read. The global impact of one small European city is indeed impressive, from shopping malls in the USA to the founding of the Edinburgh Festival to name but two achievements. Had time allowed I could easily have devoured this book in one day. However it is sobering to read that Austria played an outsized role in the Holocaust with 40% of death camp staff and the responsibility for more than half of the deaths, particularly sobering at a time where the loathsome FPO have gained 28.8% of the votes in the recent election.
May 27, 2024
Dreadfully boring but genuinely changed my view of both the contingency and the who and why shaping history in the 20th century
Also people just aren’t crazy like they used to be back then
Also people just aren’t crazy like they used to be back then
December 9, 2024
Topic is interesting but the style is too boring... couldn't finish it...
February 28, 2025
Vienna, as Richard Cockett tells it, is a modern Athens—an intellectual cauldron where post-Habsburg economic ruin fueled an extraordinary explosion of ideas. Much like its Greek predecessor, Vienna thrived on friction. It did not solve debates; it amplified them. Marxism and liberalism, feminism and patriarchy, tonality and dissonance—all clashed in this pressure cooker of intellectual innovation. The result was a wave of exports that still shape our world today.
Cockett’s Vienna spans philosophy, economics, science, music, art, and feminism. This is both its strength and limitation. The book is ambitious, painting the intellectual landscape with broad strokes rather than deep dives. The “brewhaus era,” where disciplines intermingled and debates ran late into the night, comes alive in these pages. But given the sheer breadth of material, some figures receive only passing mention. The philosophers, in particular, get short shrift—not because of their insignificance but due to the complexity of their ideas. Logical positivism, championed by Moritz Schlick and supported by Carnap, Neurath, and Waismann, influenced the early Wittgenstein profoundly. Karl Popper, in contrast, rejected verificationism in favor of falsifiability. The late Wittgenstein went further, shifting to the contextual and social nature of language. The author acknowledges these seismic shifts but does not linger on them.
Freud’s psychoanalytic dominance was met with feminist resistance from figures like Meyrder and Grete Meisel-Hess. Stefan Zweig embodied the liberal humanist strain, while the darker strains of Viennese thought incubated ideas that would shape Hitler’s worldview. Nowhere was the intellectual ferment greater than in economics. Here, the book devotes the most space, charting the rise of the Austrian School. Carl Menger’s methodological individualism and subjective value theory laid the foundation for Ludwig von Mises, Friedrich Hayek, and Oskar Morgenstern. Their ideas on free markets and anti-socialist critiques stood in stark contrast to the Marxist currents of the time.
Yet in privileging the Austrian School, the author underplays other towering figures. Gödel’s incompleteness theorems reshaped mathematics, Schumpeter’s theories of creative destruction still dominate business thinking, and Morgenstern’s game theory revolutionized economics. Otto Wagner’s architectural modernism and Schoenberg’s atonal music disrupted their fields just as much as Hayek and Mises transformed economic thought. While the author mentions these figures, their impact receives less space than the economic debates of the period.
Even with these imbalances, Vienna remains a remarkable work. It captures a city in ruin that refused intellectual stagnation, proving instead that chaos can be the mother of invention. A century later, the world is still shaped by the ideas born in Vienna’s turbulent years. The author tells this story with wide-ranging ambition, and if some areas are left underexplored, it is only because the city’s legacy is too vast to fit between two covers.
Cockett’s Vienna spans philosophy, economics, science, music, art, and feminism. This is both its strength and limitation. The book is ambitious, painting the intellectual landscape with broad strokes rather than deep dives. The “brewhaus era,” where disciplines intermingled and debates ran late into the night, comes alive in these pages. But given the sheer breadth of material, some figures receive only passing mention. The philosophers, in particular, get short shrift—not because of their insignificance but due to the complexity of their ideas. Logical positivism, championed by Moritz Schlick and supported by Carnap, Neurath, and Waismann, influenced the early Wittgenstein profoundly. Karl Popper, in contrast, rejected verificationism in favor of falsifiability. The late Wittgenstein went further, shifting to the contextual and social nature of language. The author acknowledges these seismic shifts but does not linger on them.
Freud’s psychoanalytic dominance was met with feminist resistance from figures like Meyrder and Grete Meisel-Hess. Stefan Zweig embodied the liberal humanist strain, while the darker strains of Viennese thought incubated ideas that would shape Hitler’s worldview. Nowhere was the intellectual ferment greater than in economics. Here, the book devotes the most space, charting the rise of the Austrian School. Carl Menger’s methodological individualism and subjective value theory laid the foundation for Ludwig von Mises, Friedrich Hayek, and Oskar Morgenstern. Their ideas on free markets and anti-socialist critiques stood in stark contrast to the Marxist currents of the time.
Yet in privileging the Austrian School, the author underplays other towering figures. Gödel’s incompleteness theorems reshaped mathematics, Schumpeter’s theories of creative destruction still dominate business thinking, and Morgenstern’s game theory revolutionized economics. Otto Wagner’s architectural modernism and Schoenberg’s atonal music disrupted their fields just as much as Hayek and Mises transformed economic thought. While the author mentions these figures, their impact receives less space than the economic debates of the period.
Even with these imbalances, Vienna remains a remarkable work. It captures a city in ruin that refused intellectual stagnation, proving instead that chaos can be the mother of invention. A century later, the world is still shaped by the ideas born in Vienna’s turbulent years. The author tells this story with wide-ranging ambition, and if some areas are left underexplored, it is only because the city’s legacy is too vast to fit between two covers.
February 28, 2024
16th book for 2024
Bought as preparation for a trip to Vienna during the school winter holidays here in Berlin.
This is a shortish (<400 pages) history of ideas covering the many thinkers that originated in Vienna in the first of half the 20th C. It's divided into three parts: the first, giving a background to Vienna prior to WW1; the second, the history of the rise and fall of Red Vienna between 1914 and the 1938; and the third, the influence globally of Viennese thinkers throughout the 20th and 21st C.
The number and variety of Viennese thinkers is remarkable. For instance: the originator of psychoanalysis Sigmund Freud; the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein; the composer and painter Arnold Schoenberg; the philosopher of science Karl Popper; Ernest Dichter who promoted the subconscious desires of consumers to marketing strategies (e.g., think sex and cars); Paul Lazarsfeld contributions to sociology and communication studies; the physicist Erwin Schrödinger of cat fame; the composter Gustav Mahler; the neurologist and psychiatrist Viktor Frankl; the economist Friedrich Hayek—neoliberalism has its origins in a rejection of Red Vienna; Lise Meitner, physicist who first split the atom in Vienna; Oscar Morgenstern (with John von Neumann also Austro-Hungarian) inventing game theory; Victor Gruen, who designed the first shopping malls in the US, who was trying to create, in opposition to the atomisation of the American suburbs, the sense of community he remembered from Vienna; Bill Wilder and others who revolutionised US cinema—High Noon can be seen as an inditement of the Viennese who stood passively by while the fascists took over; and so on and so and so on.
The most poignant chapter recounts the rise of fascism in Vienna and the subsequent destruction of its intellectual community (many Jewish). After the Anschluss in March 1938 as many at 100,000 out of the 200,000 Jewish population left the city within a few months. Only 15,000 Jews survived in the city at the end of the war.
One quibble I have with the book is the implication that Vienna is in someway special above and beyond other major capitals. History of ideas books could be written in a similar vein about Paris, London, New York, Berlin etc.
Of course, any book that covers such a breadth of topics will be nature relatively shallow in its analysis. But as a broad introduction to Vienna and its intellectual history it is wonderful read.
4-stars.
Bought as preparation for a trip to Vienna during the school winter holidays here in Berlin.
This is a shortish (<400 pages) history of ideas covering the many thinkers that originated in Vienna in the first of half the 20th C. It's divided into three parts: the first, giving a background to Vienna prior to WW1; the second, the history of the rise and fall of Red Vienna between 1914 and the 1938; and the third, the influence globally of Viennese thinkers throughout the 20th and 21st C.
The number and variety of Viennese thinkers is remarkable. For instance: the originator of psychoanalysis Sigmund Freud; the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein; the composer and painter Arnold Schoenberg; the philosopher of science Karl Popper; Ernest Dichter who promoted the subconscious desires of consumers to marketing strategies (e.g., think sex and cars); Paul Lazarsfeld contributions to sociology and communication studies; the physicist Erwin Schrödinger of cat fame; the composter Gustav Mahler; the neurologist and psychiatrist Viktor Frankl; the economist Friedrich Hayek—neoliberalism has its origins in a rejection of Red Vienna; Lise Meitner, physicist who first split the atom in Vienna; Oscar Morgenstern (with John von Neumann also Austro-Hungarian) inventing game theory; Victor Gruen, who designed the first shopping malls in the US, who was trying to create, in opposition to the atomisation of the American suburbs, the sense of community he remembered from Vienna; Bill Wilder and others who revolutionised US cinema—High Noon can be seen as an inditement of the Viennese who stood passively by while the fascists took over; and so on and so and so on.
The most poignant chapter recounts the rise of fascism in Vienna and the subsequent destruction of its intellectual community (many Jewish). After the Anschluss in March 1938 as many at 100,000 out of the 200,000 Jewish population left the city within a few months. Only 15,000 Jews survived in the city at the end of the war.
One quibble I have with the book is the implication that Vienna is in someway special above and beyond other major capitals. History of ideas books could be written in a similar vein about Paris, London, New York, Berlin etc.
Of course, any book that covers such a breadth of topics will be nature relatively shallow in its analysis. But as a broad introduction to Vienna and its intellectual history it is wonderful read.
4-stars.
February 2, 2025
Vienna by Richard Cockett is a useful synthesis of the intellectual milieu of interwar Vienna and its impact. It is a sprawling study that ranges from the influence of Freud's disciplines on the development of psychology in the United States to the role of Viennese publishers on trends in post-World War II British publishing. Cockett successfully demonstrates the breadth of Viennese learning. He also shows the ways in which that learning almost always had a public dimension in improving and shaping the lives of everyday people.
The strength of Crockett's history is showing vitality and range of intellectual life in Vienna during the interwar period. Part of this is due to its informal nature. The University of Vienna is depicted as a hidebound institution dominated by conservative academics that largely shunned innovations in the sciences and humanities. In its place, discussions moved to informal locations like cafes or interstitial spaces such as the intellectual circles around prominent or leading intellectuals like Ludwig van Mises.
This flourishing of ideas was able to be so decentralized because it was the city itself that served as the center of intellectual life. Cockett ably shows how Vienna's urban problems like housing and public health stimulated outside-the-box thinking. Red Vienna, what Crockett calls the fusion of socialist government and socially-minded research in the city, thus acted as a laboratory of social science and inspiration for similar experiments in living the cropped up in the mid-20th century (often with direct influence from diasporic Red Vienna intellectuals).
The breadth of Vienna is also its biggest weakness. The history covers so many fields and thinkers that it cannot investigate any of them in depth. It also becomes unwieldy in the final third of the book when Cockett moves beyond intellectual movements in the city itself to the influence of those movements in diaspora during and after World War II. Without the city, the ties between movements become tenuous and, at times, difficult to follow. Furthermore, there is no need to cover Vienna in diaspora since many of these movements - the Viennese influence in the development of free market economics, for example - are covered with more depth and thoroughness elsewhere.
Cockett's Vienna is a good starting point for those who want to learn more about the city's role in shaping the 20th century world of ideas. Still, it is best thought of as a jumping off point to other, more focused, histories.
The strength of Crockett's history is showing vitality and range of intellectual life in Vienna during the interwar period. Part of this is due to its informal nature. The University of Vienna is depicted as a hidebound institution dominated by conservative academics that largely shunned innovations in the sciences and humanities. In its place, discussions moved to informal locations like cafes or interstitial spaces such as the intellectual circles around prominent or leading intellectuals like Ludwig van Mises.
This flourishing of ideas was able to be so decentralized because it was the city itself that served as the center of intellectual life. Cockett ably shows how Vienna's urban problems like housing and public health stimulated outside-the-box thinking. Red Vienna, what Crockett calls the fusion of socialist government and socially-minded research in the city, thus acted as a laboratory of social science and inspiration for similar experiments in living the cropped up in the mid-20th century (often with direct influence from diasporic Red Vienna intellectuals).
The breadth of Vienna is also its biggest weakness. The history covers so many fields and thinkers that it cannot investigate any of them in depth. It also becomes unwieldy in the final third of the book when Cockett moves beyond intellectual movements in the city itself to the influence of those movements in diaspora during and after World War II. Without the city, the ties between movements become tenuous and, at times, difficult to follow. Furthermore, there is no need to cover Vienna in diaspora since many of these movements - the Viennese influence in the development of free market economics, for example - are covered with more depth and thoroughness elsewhere.
Cockett's Vienna is a good starting point for those who want to learn more about the city's role in shaping the 20th century world of ideas. Still, it is best thought of as a jumping off point to other, more focused, histories.
December 2, 2023
Vienna, or to be more precise,its intellectuals,has shaped the modern world,especially the Western part of it. The city harboured so many brilliant minds and almost each aspect of culture, science and arts was shaped by this city, beginning from the end of the 19th century to these very days.
The book is divided into three parts, the first serving as a short introduction to it. There you will read about the famous Austrian Bildung, or education these famous personalities received.This was the golden age of the city, up to WW1.The demise of Franz Joseph in Novemeber 1916 was also the end of this magnificent era of Vienna's rich and historical past. Nostalgia took over and it was to continue long after the fall of the Austro-Hungarian empire.
The second part is about Red Vienna,its rabid anti-Semitism and the fascist domination of it by the Hitler barbarous hordes.The most interesting and original chapter in this part is about the contribution many women made in many areas, especially in science and art therapy.Thus, one of them was the famous Hedi Lamar! ,yes, the actress who defied all the gender conventions of her time,whose real name was Hedwig Kiesler and who was born into an assimilated Jewish family.Her father passed his enthusiasm to his daughter ,who worked on helping the Amerian Navy by developing new ways to tackle the infamous Nazi U-boat attacks in the Atlantic.
The third and last part,called"Emigrants and Exiles", is about the mass exaodus and immigration of so many innovative intellectuals, most of them making their way to Britain and particularly to the USA afterthe end of WW2
True, there was a minority of them who detested America, the most famous of them being Sigmund Freud. He considered the USA to be a "gigantic mistake", dubbing it "dollaria" and its people as "savages".But most of the others embraced the new country. They were artists, writers, actors, directors, philosophers, architects and more.
The impact these minds had on humanity was colossal and is still felt today. In fact,one can say that we are all in a way Viennese. This is aw onderful and deeply researched book as well as extremely original in its parts, to be read a number of times. Kudos, Mr Crockett!
The book is divided into three parts, the first serving as a short introduction to it. There you will read about the famous Austrian Bildung, or education these famous personalities received.This was the golden age of the city, up to WW1.The demise of Franz Joseph in Novemeber 1916 was also the end of this magnificent era of Vienna's rich and historical past. Nostalgia took over and it was to continue long after the fall of the Austro-Hungarian empire.
The second part is about Red Vienna,its rabid anti-Semitism and the fascist domination of it by the Hitler barbarous hordes.The most interesting and original chapter in this part is about the contribution many women made in many areas, especially in science and art therapy.Thus, one of them was the famous Hedi Lamar! ,yes, the actress who defied all the gender conventions of her time,whose real name was Hedwig Kiesler and who was born into an assimilated Jewish family.Her father passed his enthusiasm to his daughter ,who worked on helping the Amerian Navy by developing new ways to tackle the infamous Nazi U-boat attacks in the Atlantic.
The third and last part,called"Emigrants and Exiles", is about the mass exaodus and immigration of so many innovative intellectuals, most of them making their way to Britain and particularly to the USA afterthe end of WW2
True, there was a minority of them who detested America, the most famous of them being Sigmund Freud. He considered the USA to be a "gigantic mistake", dubbing it "dollaria" and its people as "savages".But most of the others embraced the new country. They were artists, writers, actors, directors, philosophers, architects and more.
The impact these minds had on humanity was colossal and is still felt today. In fact,one can say that we are all in a way Viennese. This is aw onderful and deeply researched book as well as extremely original in its parts, to be read a number of times. Kudos, Mr Crockett!
May 20, 2025
This book’s greatest achievement is how clearly it shows just how little of our modern life existed even 150 years ago, and how much of what we now take for granted was seeded in fin-de-siècle Vienna. Whether it’s in art, economics, public relations, architecture, or even advertising, so many of the paradigms we live inside today trace back to the cultural ferment of that time and place. The book does a great job of reminding us how recent and how contingent our modernity really is.
I also appreciated the breadth of intellectual and creative figures covered. I learned a lot about people I hadn’t known before, and didn’t fully appreciate how many major 20th-century developments had their roots in this relatively small city. Especially in today’s world, the idea of a declining empire producing one last explosive bloom of world-shaping culture feels… timely.
That said, the book tries to be encyclopedic in its reach, and that’s both its strength and its biggest flaw. Not every branch of Vienna’s influence, from pottery to interior design to advertising theory, needs its own detailed chapter. The same story could’ve been told with tighter framing, leaving space for more context or pointers for deeper exploration without overwhelming the reader with volume.
What I personally missed most was the spirit of the city itself. The book is full of people, places, and movements, but not much of the feel of the time. I wanted more quotes, more firsthand accounts, more texture around what it meant to be in Vienna at the time.
One note on the audiobook... the narration tries to be engaging, but the narrator’s consistent mispronunciation of virtually every Viennese name is pretty painful. It’s hard to stay immersed when familiar names are being brutally butchered one after another.
Still, if you’re interested in the long afterlife of empires, or how a particular place can shape the world for a century to come, this is a worthwhile, if occasionally long, read.
I also appreciated the breadth of intellectual and creative figures covered. I learned a lot about people I hadn’t known before, and didn’t fully appreciate how many major 20th-century developments had their roots in this relatively small city. Especially in today’s world, the idea of a declining empire producing one last explosive bloom of world-shaping culture feels… timely.
That said, the book tries to be encyclopedic in its reach, and that’s both its strength and its biggest flaw. Not every branch of Vienna’s influence, from pottery to interior design to advertising theory, needs its own detailed chapter. The same story could’ve been told with tighter framing, leaving space for more context or pointers for deeper exploration without overwhelming the reader with volume.
What I personally missed most was the spirit of the city itself. The book is full of people, places, and movements, but not much of the feel of the time. I wanted more quotes, more firsthand accounts, more texture around what it meant to be in Vienna at the time.
One note on the audiobook... the narration tries to be engaging, but the narrator’s consistent mispronunciation of virtually every Viennese name is pretty painful. It’s hard to stay immersed when familiar names are being brutally butchered one after another.
Still, if you’re interested in the long afterlife of empires, or how a particular place can shape the world for a century to come, this is a worthwhile, if occasionally long, read.
October 19, 2025
2.5/5
Let's start with the good: this book largely skips the done-to-death portrayal of turn of the century Vienna (did you know Tito, Stalin, Hitler, Freud and Trotsky all lived etc etc), which you can't really do better than Zweig anyway, in favour of presenting an incredibly large array of fascinating Viennese from times that loom less large in our popular culture. The sheer amount of characters and subjects touched upon make this a fascinating book, but it also means the author, save for a few exceptions, cannot go much more into detail than a series of biographical vignettes. Want to learn more about this or that figure? It's off to Wikipedia you go, as this book won't give you more than a stub. Despite trying in the beginning to give you a sense of what milieu these people were coming from and against what backdrop they moved, it will also seldom go into much detail about where the philosophies came from and what intrinsic or extrinsic factors made them evolve. This is not meant to be a history of Vienna, but some effort in the direction of history or sociology or in general ideology would have helped make this a book that you come out of with *understanding* rather than simply *knowledge*. (This flaw btw is shared with the only other book I've ever read from this publisher, namely Gregory Woods's Homintern. Is it a general strategy?) Add to that prose that occasionally gets somewhat grating (every second sentence didn't have to be constructed as "as X, so Y"), and you end up with a great premise, a first step towards many interesting thoughts, but a somewhat unsatisfying book in itself.
Let's start with the good: this book largely skips the done-to-death portrayal of turn of the century Vienna (did you know Tito, Stalin, Hitler, Freud and Trotsky all lived etc etc), which you can't really do better than Zweig anyway, in favour of presenting an incredibly large array of fascinating Viennese from times that loom less large in our popular culture. The sheer amount of characters and subjects touched upon make this a fascinating book, but it also means the author, save for a few exceptions, cannot go much more into detail than a series of biographical vignettes. Want to learn more about this or that figure? It's off to Wikipedia you go, as this book won't give you more than a stub. Despite trying in the beginning to give you a sense of what milieu these people were coming from and against what backdrop they moved, it will also seldom go into much detail about where the philosophies came from and what intrinsic or extrinsic factors made them evolve. This is not meant to be a history of Vienna, but some effort in the direction of history or sociology or in general ideology would have helped make this a book that you come out of with *understanding* rather than simply *knowledge*. (This flaw btw is shared with the only other book I've ever read from this publisher, namely Gregory Woods's Homintern. Is it a general strategy?) Add to that prose that occasionally gets somewhat grating (every second sentence didn't have to be constructed as "as X, so Y"), and you end up with a great premise, a first step towards many interesting thoughts, but a somewhat unsatisfying book in itself.
November 6, 2025
Cockett's account of the myriad of intellectual gestures and movements that emerge out of the fin-de-sciècle atmosphere and come to bear fruit in the inter-bellum years in Vienna is well-informed and motivated to lay out the consequences these movements introduce in a multi-facetted fashion. To the extent that - at times - I was caught by surprise by the gross generalisations and lack of nuance with which certain biographies and ideological developments are described. In part, Cockett's descriptions are highly ideologically motivated and trace schools of thought that have paved the way for (particularly economic) intelligentsiae who have wreaked havoc on the international stage. Yet, the positions that Cockett refers to in order to trace said developments are hailed as heroes that "saved [the West] from communism" for example. NB: the actual quote says "saving Italy from communism", without further explaining how such a salvation was brought about by the actual fiscal policies introduced, or what legitimises such a dystopic depiction of alternative renditions of history.
Overall the book remains largely on the surface level of the developments that it traces rather than actually examining the structurall constellations which it claims to localise. This seems understandable, since the narrative model of dissecting the developments at hand via the engagement with individual biographies does not really allow for a deep-dive into the mouvances of strategies and systems.
Overall the book remains largely on the surface level of the developments that it traces rather than actually examining the structurall constellations which it claims to localise. This seems understandable, since the narrative model of dissecting the developments at hand via the engagement with individual biographies does not really allow for a deep-dive into the mouvances of strategies and systems.
January 2, 2025
It's ambitious to try to make everything in the world connect back to Vienna, and the author does a good job of making the premise seem to have some justification, because of the sheer number of interesting Viennese who influenced various fields all over the world.
The question then is why post WWI Vienna was such a fertile place for ideas? The book's answer seems to be because the Kaiser's capital city brought together people from all over the Austro-Hungarian Empire and offered opportunities for free expression, intellectual inquiry, and economic advancement to diverse people regardless of ethnicity or religion.
Unfortunately, the book doesn't do much to see if the ideas are any good as opposed to just being influential. For example, Freudian psychoanalysis may have been an improvement on whatever was happening before and makes for interesting literature now, but I don't think it's taken seriously as evidence-based medicine anymore. The critical eye is the foggiest though when it comes to Hayek and neoliberalism. The author makes a big deal about how this was meant to be objective science as opposed to the "scientism." What are the testable hypotheses of "The Road to Serfdom" ? How many of his predictions have come true? How on Earth is Wikipedia an example of laissez-faire capitalism as opposed to social democracy?
The question then is why post WWI Vienna was such a fertile place for ideas? The book's answer seems to be because the Kaiser's capital city brought together people from all over the Austro-Hungarian Empire and offered opportunities for free expression, intellectual inquiry, and economic advancement to diverse people regardless of ethnicity or religion.
Unfortunately, the book doesn't do much to see if the ideas are any good as opposed to just being influential. For example, Freudian psychoanalysis may have been an improvement on whatever was happening before and makes for interesting literature now, but I don't think it's taken seriously as evidence-based medicine anymore. The critical eye is the foggiest though when it comes to Hayek and neoliberalism. The author makes a big deal about how this was meant to be objective science as opposed to the "scientism." What are the testable hypotheses of "The Road to Serfdom" ? How many of his predictions have come true? How on Earth is Wikipedia an example of laissez-faire capitalism as opposed to social democracy?
November 13, 2024
No book could live up to a title like Vienna: How the City of Ideas Created the Modern World, but Richard Crockett makes a strong case, citing Vienna’s contributions to psychology,philosophy, economics, architecture, film, marketing, design and more. A reader who is unfamiliar with Vienna, circa 1900-1930, would be lost in the blizzard of good examples supporting Crockett’s overall case, so although this is a readable book, I wouldn’t say it’s a beginner’s book. Great figures like Freud and Hayek are supplemented by lesser known figures…dozens of them.
Crockett deals with the contradiction that Vienna was an open city and yet an anti-Semitic city. In the end, the anti-Semites and Nazis won, as we know, but not before great talents flowed into Vienna from the Habsburg empire, especially after WWI. The tragedy is that those great talents were driven out of Vienna either to live abroad or die in concentration camps, and yet those who lived abroad spread Viennese magic from Great Britain to California.
Because Crockett deals with so many subjects, none is explored in great depth. In a way, this comprehensive assessment of Vienna’s contributions to the modern world does more to start a discussion than finish it.
Crockett deals with the contradiction that Vienna was an open city and yet an anti-Semitic city. In the end, the anti-Semites and Nazis won, as we know, but not before great talents flowed into Vienna from the Habsburg empire, especially after WWI. The tragedy is that those great talents were driven out of Vienna either to live abroad or die in concentration camps, and yet those who lived abroad spread Viennese magic from Great Britain to California.
Because Crockett deals with so many subjects, none is explored in great depth. In a way, this comprehensive assessment of Vienna’s contributions to the modern world does more to start a discussion than finish it.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 80 reviews