The Rothschilds: A Family Portrait

by Frederic Morton

Overview

In the past two centuries, the Rothschild family has been at the center of great events in Europe and the world, such as the defeat of Napoleon at Waterloo and the development of the Suez Canal. In this National Book Award finalist, Frederic Morton brings the family to life, starting with Mayer of Frankfurt, longtime adviser to Germany's princes, who broke through the barriers of the Jewish ghetto and placed his family on the road to wealth and power, followed by Lord Alfred in London, Baron Philippe in Paris, and many others.

"[Morton's] tale grows fascinating, luxuriating in the social and human details of what happened once the Rothschild tribe had financed England, bailed out the returning French Bourbons, helped Austria intervene in Italy and lent millions to the Holy See itself." — William Harlan Hale, The New York Times

"Hardly a page without sparkle. Morton writes a chromium-plate style... [he] enables the reader to grasp some of the fundamental secrets of the Rothschild success — above all, its endurance." — New York Herald Tribune Books

"Vivid, witty and perceptive." — Saturday Review

Product Details

BN ID:	2940185584644
Publisher:	Plunkett Lake Press
Publication date:	01/10/2023
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Sales rank:	973,820
File size:	3 MB

About the Author

Born Fritz Mandelbaum in Vienna, Frederic Morton (1924-2015) fled to London with his family in 1939 after Hitler’s 1938 Anschluss of Austria and the family settled in New York, where Frederic’s father, who had owned a factory supplying belt buckles to the Austrian army, changed his last name to Morton to join an anti-Semitic union. Morton learned to be a baker in a trade school before earning a bachelor’s degree from City College of New York in 1947 and a master’s degree from the New School for Social Research in 1949; he also attended Columbia University.

Morton always wrote in English. His first novel was The Hound (1947) about a privileged youth in 1939 Vienna, followed by other novels including The Schatten Affair (1965) about a German-born American Jew who returns to Berlin as the publicist for a financier, Snow Gods (1969) about wealthy habitués of a resort in the Swiss Alps, An Unknown Woman (1976) about a brilliant orphan of Jewish immigrants who ascends to intellectual celebrity and financial riches, and The Forever Street (1984), a family saga set in Vienna over three generations until World War II.

His books of non-fiction include The Rothschilds (1962), a National Book Award finalist about the banking family turned into a musical in 1970 which ran for over 500 performances on Broadway; A Nervous Splendor: Vienna, 1888-1889 (1979) about the life of the city — including Freud, Mahler, Klimt, Schnitzler, Bruckner and Herzl — and the murder by Crown Prince Rudolf of his mistress and his suicide at Mayerling, also a National Book Award finalist turned into a musical staged in Budapest and Vienna; Thunder at Twilight: Vienna 1913-14 (1989) about the city as Europe heads toward World War I; and a memoir, Runaway Waltz (2005).

Morton also wrote for many publications, including Esquire, The Atlantic, Playboy, Harper’s, the Hudson Review and The New York Times. He received Austria’s Cross of Honor for Arts and Sciences in 2003.