Further Reading

Below are books about the history of Europe in the time period covered by this course.  Links are provided to book resellers' offers for used books in very good (close to brand new) condition that often provide significant savings.  You can always contact me for help in selecting books if you are unsure of what you want.


Swafford, Jan.   Beethoven: Anguish and Triumph  (2014)  1,054 pages.  ($29 new hardcover).  (@JPL)

An excellent recent biography.  You may be able to get it for $20 delivered using this link

"[T]he stately rhythm, carefully etched detailing and oceanic sweep of this ambitious book mirror the complexity and richness of Beethoven's revolutionary Romanticism...surrender to it and it’s easy to be swept away...Swafford comes marvelously equipped to take on the enormousness of Beethoven's life and work – his heights of inspiration, depths of suffering, the roots and range of his masterworks...Beethoven: Anguish and Triumph doesn't drown in its musicology so much as achieve a buoyant balance of technical and human detail." – Matt Damsker, USA TODAY


Lockwood, Lewis. Beethoven: The Music and the Life  (2005)   624 pages

Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in biographies.


Lockwood, Lewis.  Beethoven's Symphonies: An Artistic Vision  (2017)  307 pages

“Lockwood has given music lovers a great gift. By looking at historical context―who listened to Beethoven, what he read―and how the symphonies were planned, the reader gets a unique view of the creative process of one of our greatest musical minds.”
- Yo-Yo Ma, cellist

“This remarkable book is much more than a guide to Beethoven’s symphonies. By granting us access to the composer’s workshop, Lockwood reveals a faltering human being whose unfaltering artistic resolution remains one of the great stories of the human spirit.”
- Scott Burnham, Scheide Professor of Music History, Princeton University

“Lockwood elegantly imparts an enormous amount of fascinating detail, placing each symphony in the context of Beethoven’s work in other genres and concert activity. What a pleasure to read!”
- Emanuel Ax, pianist



Lederer, Victor: Beethoven's Chamber Music: A Listeners Guide  (2012)  198 pages.  @JPL

Rosen, Charles.  Beethoven's Piano Sonatas:  A Short Companion  (2001)  288 pages.  @ JPL, UNF


Recommended Mozart Biographies


Two very good overviews of Early Modern Europe to the French Revolution

Upton, Anthony. Europe: 1600 - 1789  (2001)   448 pages.   (@UNF, JPL)

 A very good overview of the period.  Used paperback link.

Cameron, Euan. Early Modern Europe: An Oxford History  (1999)  440 pages.   (@ UNF, JPL)
     
A good alternative to the overview above.  Used paperback link


More specific books on the time era, events and major figures

Blackburn, David:  History of Germany, 1780-1918: The Long Nineteenth Century  (2002)  480 pages.  $39 (new paperback)  (@UNF) 

An excellent political, social and cultural history of Germany up to World War I.  Check re-sellers for better prices.


Blanning, Tim.  Frederick the Great: King of Prussia  (2016)  688 pages.  (@JPL)  Used link. 

“At once scholarly and highly readable . . . [Blanning] has given us a superb portrait of an enlightened despot, equally at home on the battlefield and in the opera house, both utterly ruthless and culturally refined.”—Commentary


Judson, Pieter.  The Habsburg Empire:  A New History (2016) 592 pages.  $24.  

"Judson forever banishes images of the Habsburg Empire as a decrepit and declining anachronism. This is the history we have been waiting for since the empire disappeared from Europe’s map. (Tara Zahra, author of The Great Departure: Mass Migration from Eastern Europe and the Making of the Free World)"

"Strongly revisionist and effortlessly wide-ranging, Judson’s book offers a strikingly original interpretation of Austria-Hungary as an empire rather than a collection of hostile national groups. This powerful insight should change how we think about European history. (Robert Nemes, author of Another Hungary: The Nineteenth-Century Provinces in Eight Lives)"


McPhee, Peter.  Liberty or Death:  The French Revolution  (2017)  468 pages.  $16 (new paperback)

Excellent, very recent telling of the Revolution.

"Any card-carrying historian must record with admiration Peter McPhee’s remarkable mastery of the literature, the debates, and the generations of interpretation about the French Revolution. . . . McPhee’s splendid book — historiographically astute, sensitive to moral as well as political and social positions, beautifully written — provides a guide through the complexities of the Revolution and reflects on its legacy."—Robert Aldrich, Australian Book Review


Pagden, Anthony:  The Enlightenment: and Why It Still Matters   (2013)  528 pages.
$24 hardcover. (@JPL)  Used book link 

“For those who recognize the names Hegel, Hume, Rousseau, Kant, Voltaire, and Diderot but are unfamiliar with their thought, [Anthony] Padgen provides a fantastic introduction, explaining the driving philosophies of the period and placing their proponents in context. . . . Padgen’s belief that the Enlightenment ‘made it possible for us to think . . . beyond the narrow worlds into which we are born’ is clearly and cogently presented.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)


Rapport, Mike.  1848: Year of Revolution  (2010)   496 pages.
$15 new paperback.  (@JPL, UNF)
   
A very good book on the revolutions that shook Europe in 1848.


Roberts, Andrew.  Napoleon: A Life  (2015)   976 pages. $12 new paperback.  (@JPL)

"The definitive biography of the great soldier-statesman by the New York Times bestselling author of  The Storm of War—winner of the Grand Prix of the Foundation Napoleon 2014"