{"product_id":"metternich-strategist-and-visionary-9780674743922","title":"Metternich: Strategist and Visionary","description":"\u003cp\u003eA compelling new biography that recasts the most important European statesman of the first half of the nineteenth century  famous for his alleged archconservatism  as a friend of realpolitik and reform  pursuing international peace.  Metternich has a reputation as the epitome of reactionary conservatism. Historians treat him as the archenemy of progress  a ruthless aristocrat who used his power as the dominant European statesman of the first half of the nineteenth century to stifle liberalism  suppress national independence  and oppose the dreams of social change that inspired the revolutionaries of 1848. Wolfram Siemann paints a fundamentally new image of the man who shaped Europe for over four decades. He reveals Metternich as more modern and his career much more forward-looking than we have ever recognized.  Clemens von Metternich emerged from the horrors of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars  Siemann shows  committed above all to the preservation of peace. That often required him  as the Austrian Empires foreign minister and chancellor  to back authority. He was  as Henry Kissinger has observed  the father of realpolitik. But short of compromising on his overarching goal Metternich aimed to accommodate liberalism and nationalism as much as possible. Siemann draws on previously unexamined archives to bring this multilayered and dazzling man to life. We meet him as a tradition-conscious imperial count  an early industrial entrepreneur  an admirer of Britains liberal constitution  a failing reformer in a fragile multiethnic state  and a man prone to sometimes scandalous relations with glamorous women.  Hailed on its German publication as a masterpiece of historical writing  Metternich will endure as an essential guide to nineteenth-century Europe  indispensable for understanding the forces of revolution  reaction  and moderation that shaped the modern world.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"My Store","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":45953189937205,"sku":"ByrdShop_067474392X","price":31.05,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0627\/8139\/0901\/files\/9780674743922.jpg?v=1788181222","url":"https:\/\/atxbooks.com\/products\/metternich-strategist-and-visionary-9780674743922","provider":"ATX Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}