Vienna, 1889-1914, the jewel in the crown of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, a major cultural capital at the high period of European modernism. In this collection, the contradictions of Vienna are explored in sixteen especially written articles which strike a unique balance between popular and lesser-known topics reflecting the mix of Vienna itself. Its great figures like Sigmund Freud, Robert Musil, and Arnold Schoenberg emerge along with the context in which their innovations took shape. Its cabarets, feuilletons, philosophical trends, and political factions, pedagogic experiments and sexual mores, are all treated in the pages of this interdisciplinary work.