The Red Prince: The Secret Lives of a Habsburg Archduke - Paperback

by Timothy Snyder (Author)

From the bestselling author of On Tyranny, the definitive biography of Wilhelm Von Habsburg, enigmatic and eccentric archduke of Austria.

"Not often does scholarly history soar and entrap like a fine historical novel, but here it does." --Foreign Affairs

Wilhelm von Habsburg wore the court regalia of a Habsburg archduke, the simple suit of a Parisian exile, and every so often, a dress. After his youthful dream of a Ukrainian kingdom collapsed following the First World War, Wilhelm was, by turns, an ally of German imperialists, a notorious French lover, an angry Austrian monarchist, a calm opponent of Hitler, and finally a spy against Stalin.

In The Red Prince, acclaimed historian Timothy Snyder offers an indelible portrait of a man who embodied the many contradictions of twentieth-century Europe; a figure whose journeys spanned the continent and whose politics and ambitions united the old order of empire with the new politics of the nation-state.

Author Biography

Timothy Snyder is the Housum Professor of History at Yale University and a permanent fellow at the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna. He received his doctorate from the University of Oxford in 1997, where he was a British Marshall Scholar. Before joining the faculty at Yale in 2001, he held fellowships in Paris, Vienna, and Warsaw, and an Academy Scholarship at Harvard.

He has spent some ten years in Europe, and speaks five and reads ten European languages. Among his publications are several award-winning books, all of which have been translated: Nationalism, Marxism, and Modern Central Europe: A Biography of Kazimierz Kelles-Krauz; The Reconstruction of Nations: Poland, Ukraine, Lithuania, Belarus, 1569-1999; Sketches from a Secret War: A Polish Artist's Mission to Liberate Soviet Ukraine; The Red Prince: The Secret Lives of a Habsburg Archduke; On Tyranny; and The Road to Unfreedom. He has written for publications including the New York Review of Books, the New York Times, Foreign Affairs, the Times Literary Supplement, Nation, the New Republic, the International Herald Tribune, and the Wall Street Journal.