{"product_id":"the-house-of-wittgenstein-a-family-at-war","title":"The House of Wittgenstein: A Family at War","description":"\u003cp\u003eFrom 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 Manns Buddenbrooks.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"My Store","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":44945414324277,"sku":"ByrdShop_0385520603","price":26.86,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0627\/8139\/0901\/files\/9780385520607.jpg?v=1769887940","url":"https:\/\/atxbooks.com\/products\/the-house-of-wittgenstein-a-family-at-war","provider":"ATX Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}