"This is cultural history of the first order, and it is liberal and humane history at its very best."―David Cannadine An essential work for anyone who wishes to understand the social history of the nineteenth century, Schnitzler's Century is the culmination of Peter Gay's thirty-five years of scholarship on bourgeois culture and society. Using Arthur Schnitzler, the sexually emboldened Viennese playwright, as his master of ceremonies, Gay offers a brilliant reexamination of the hundred-year period that began with the defeat of Napoleon and concluded with the conflagration of 1914. This is a defining work by one of America's greatest historians. 12 b/w illustrations. I can't remember the last time I had such fun—and learned so much—from any work of history or nonfiction. -- David Nasaw, winner of the Bancroft Prize for The Chief: The Life of William Randolph Hearst This is cultural history of the first order; and it is liberal and humane history at its very best. -- David Cannadine Peter Gay (1923―2015) was the author of more than twenty-five books, including the National Book Award winner The Enlightenment , the best-selling Weimar Culture , and the widely translated Freud: A Life for Our Time .