Assessing the impact of fin-de-siècle Jewish culture on subsequent developments in literature and culture, this book is the first to consider the historical trajectory of Austrian-Jewish writing across the 20th century. It examines how Vienna, the city that stood at the center of Jewish life in the Austrian Empire and later the Austrian nation, assumed a special significance in the imaginations of Jewish writers as a space and an idea. The author focuses on the special relationship between Austrian-Jewish writers and the city to reveal a century-long pattern of living in tension with the city, experiencing simultaneously acceptance and exclusion, feeling "unheimlich heimisch" (eerily at home) in Vienna.

Between 1450 and 1750 Europe underwent tremendous political, religious and cultural change - change which laid the foundations for the Europe we know today. Henry Kamen has compiled an accessible biographical guide to Europe in this most exciting of periods - the time of the Renaissance and the Reformation, the time of da Vinci and Erasmus, Elizabeth I and Oliver Cromwell. In over a thousand entries, which cover the whole of Europe and include politics, culture, religion and science, Professor Kamen and his international contributors, all experts in their field, shed new light on the key players in this extraordinarily rich and formative period of history.