The House of Wittgenstein: A Family at War

The House of Wittgenstein: A Family at War
by Alexander Waugh

The House of Wittgenstein: A Family at War
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Book Summary Information

Author: Alexander Waugh
Edition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2009-02-24
ISBN: 0385520603
Number of pages: 352
Publisher: Doubleday

Book Reviews of The House of Wittgenstein: A Family at War

Book Review: Rollicking Jolly Read
Summary: 5 Stars

Vaguely aware of who the Wittgenstein brothers Paul and Ludwig were, I feared the subject matter would be a highbrow detailed discussion of their works. Quite the contrary! Mr. Waugh disdains what could have been a dry pedantic review and approaches the story from another angle: a uniquely vibrant and talented family, graced with impossible wealth, who just don't get along very well. It's a rollickingly jolly read, full of humor, quirkiness, personality, and intelligence. "I never wanted it to end," as the old chestnut goes. The personal foibles of the famous are always a source of fascination and this book is bang on winner. You won't be sorry you bought it.

Summary of The House of Wittgenstein: A Family at War

From Alexander Waugh, the author of the acclaimed memoir Fathers and Sons, comes a grand saga of a brilliant and tragic Viennese family.

The Wittgenstein family was one of the richest, most talented, and most eccentric in European history. Karl Wittgenstein, who ran away from home as a wayward and rebellious youth, returned to his native Vienna to make a fortune in the iron and steel industries. He bought factories and paintings and palaces, but the domineering and overbearing influence he exerted over his eight children resulted in a generation of siblings fraught by inner antagonisms and nervous tension. Three of his sons committed suicide; Paul, the fourth, became a world-famous concert pianist, using only his left hand and playing compositions commissioned from Ravel and Prokofiev; while Ludwig, the youngest, is now regarded as one of the greatest philosophers of the twentieth century. In this dramatic historical and psychological epic, Alexander Waugh traces the triumphs and vicissitudes of a family held together by a fanatical love of music yet torn apart by money, madness, conflicts of loyalty, and the cataclysmic upheaval of two world wars. Through the bleak despair of a Siberian prison camp and the terror of a Gestapo interrogation room, one courageous and unlikely hero emerges from the rubble of the house of Wittgenstein in the figure of Paul, an extraordinary testament to the indomitable spirit of human survival.

Alexander Waugh tells this saga of baroque family unhappiness and perseverance against incredible odds with a novelistic richness to rival Thomas Mann?s Buddenbrooks.

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