Catherine Horel, a renowned historian of Habsburg Central Europe, embarked on a formidable task - to write an urban history of Austria-Hungary. Her expertise in urban history, focus on Transleithania (still rare in all-Habsburg scholarship), and language skills made her a perfect candidate for the task. But how to maneuver in a field where so much literature has been produced in the last 20 years, let alone older scholarship? How to present the entanglement of the urban and the nationalist revolution that took place in the last decades of the empire's existence? And, finally, how to find a common denominator in such a diverse area?

Horel decided to solve this dilemma by choosing twelve cities, six from the Hungarian and six from the Austrian part of the dual monarchy: Arad, Brünn (Brno), Czernowitz (Cernăuți, Cernivci), Fiume (Rijeka), Lemberg (Lwów/Lviv), Nagyvárad (Oradea), Pozsony (Preßburg, Prešporok; today Bratislava), Sarajevo, Szabadka (Subotica), Temesvár (Timișoara), Trieste (Trst), and Zagreb. The very enumeration of these cities including the various versions of their names points to the common trait Horel is most interested in-their multicultural character. Consciously excluding metropolises such as Vienna, Budapest, or Prague, she focuses on what she calls "midsize cities"-usually provincial capitals or statutory cities. Building upon modern studies of multilingualism and multiculturalism, she presents the social landscapes of the respective cities in their full diversity, not limited to the alleged national conflicts or the nostalgic picture of peaceful coexistence.

In her analysis, Horel focuses on different aspects of multicultural urban life: religious and cultural institutions, schooling, local politics, urban development, and local identity issues. The study, based mostly on the author's research in the press and her use of the existing scholarship, introduces local contexts and the most prominent actors. This thematic structure unfortunately requires presenting examples from all twelve cities in every chapter which may sometimes feel tedious to readers, especially when concrete cases amount to a highly diverse picture rather than a unified one. In certain subchapters, the cities simply prove incomparable and so deeply rooted in local contexts that the analysis turns into an enumeration of facts, not a way to connect them. Despite the apparent similarity of their neo-Renaissance representative buildings, the rich and well-connected Trieste can hardly be compared to the remote capital of an impoverished region, such as Czernowitz, and the challenges faced by local politicians in Sarajevo differed strongly from those in Brünn. On the other hand, it is precisely the diversity of the Habsburg Monarchy that the book praises and aims to describe. In this sense, the apparent inconsistency may come from the very nature of the researched object.

A similar query can be raised regarding the thematic scope of the reviewed book. Given that the nineteenth century is broadly considered the age of the cities and that Horel decided to cover topics ranging from industrialization to national politics, and from cultural associations to the structure of the military, one could rightfully ask: Isn't it a socio-cultural history of the last thirty years of the Habsburg Empire more than just a history of its cities? And isn't it a textbook rather than a monograph? After all, Pieter Judson in his history of the empire used a similar method when dealing with the same period (1880-1914) - his examples supporting the general argument come from different urban settings from all over the dual monarchy. [1] Yet again, this accusation should rather be directed towards the object of the study, not towards the author.

Other minor errors or simplifications were inevitable given the scale of the reviewed study and should by no means influence the generally positive assessment of the book. Horel's admirable work has resulted in a well-informed study, often giving much space to the less-studied regions and cities, and always paying attention to the adequate representation of Transleithania. It can also be seen as a guide to the ever-growing field of late Habsburg urban history-a modern compendium-and, last but not least, an abundant source of trivia from the fascinating world of the Habsburg cities.

Note:

[1] Pieter M. Judson: The Habsburg Empire. A New History, Cambridge, MA / London 2016, 333-384.

Kajetan Stobiecki