Thunder at Twilight

Vienna 1913/1914

By: Frederic Morton

Narrated by: Arthur Morey

Thunder at Twilight is a landmark historical vision, drawing on hitherto untapped sources to illuminate two crucial years in the life of the extraordinary city of Vienna—and in the life of the twentieth century.

It was during the carnival of 1913 that a young Stalin arrived in Vienna on a mission that would launch him into the upper echelon of Russian revolutionaries, and it was here that he first collided with Trotsky. It was in Vienna that the failed artist Adolf Hitler kept daubing watercolors and spouting tirades at fellow drifters in a flophouse. Here Archduke Franz Ferdinand had a troubled audience with Emperor Franz Joseph—and soon the bullet that killed the Archduke would set off the Great War that would kill ten million more.

With luminous prose that has twice made him a finalist for the National Book Award, Frederic Morton evokes the opulent, elegant, incomparable sunset metropolis—Vienna on the brink of cataclysm.

Don

Excellent detail surrounding the events in Hapsburg Vienna and Sarajevo before the Guns of August 1914 were unleashed.

great era great book great narrator

Vienna during an 18-month period, 1913-1914, political and high-cultural history. excellent description and analysis.

Very good

I like Frederic Morton's writing very much. I lived and worked in Vienna Austria. He describes the information and ambiance with skill.

My best Audible listen of the year

If you are interested in WW1, this history should be near the top of your list. The writing is poetic. The narrator, sublime. A near-perfect work.

Simply incredible

Great story teller, great narrator. Amazing how he weaves the different lives and strands from politics to psychology to literature.