Drawing together a wealth of unpublished material in a comparative framework, this volume recreates the life of the courtiers and servants of the imperial court in Vienna and the royal court in Paris-Versailles from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century. It reveals how the royal households operated at the heart of the early modern state and offers original approaches to understanding statebuilding and the concept of "absolutism." "[Duindam] has written an important book that historians of early modern courts and state formation will need to absorb." Malcom Smuts, University of Massachusetts, Boston, Renaissance Quarterly "... Duindam paints a fascinating portrait of court life in the late-seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries...." Habsburg (H-Net) "...no future scholar of Vienna or Versailles will be able to ignore his carefully researched book. Comparatists are well advised to study it closely. This publication--like that of Elias before him--will provide the impetus for much new scholarship in the historiography of the early modern European court." H-German (H-Net) "The author of this outstanding work traces in scrupulous detail the evolution of the royal household in France and Austria from the Renaissance to the eve of the global wars of the French Revolution." The Historian "The author is to be congratulated for a first book that represents a tour de force of scholarship across two centuries of documents in some of the less riveting fonds of the Austrian State Archives." Austrian History Yearbook "Solidly researched and lucidly written, this book is clearly a worthwhile and important study. The author's conclusions have major bearing not only on the nature of the court but also on the overall shape of politics in both countries. Its appearance is another welcome sign that the royal court has begun to attract the kind of sophisticated, intensive investigation that other state institutions of this period have received for two generations or more." The Journal of Modern History Thomas E. Kaiser, University of Arkansas at Little Rock A comparative study of the courts of Vienna and Paris-Versailles, 1550–1780. Jeroen Duindam is professor of early modern history, Leiden University, The Netherlands. Used Book in Good Condition