Vienna Voices: A Traveler Listens to the City of Dreams

This is a beautifully and sensitively written collection of personal impressions of Vienna intertwined with flashbacks of personal history of a Viennese Jewish family in the years before and after the Anschluss. A very delicate treatment of a highly emotional topic.

Weinberger's glimpse into Vienna's rich cultural and historical life serves as a launching point for researching her in-laws' past. Though well-off and industrious throughout the late thirties, the onset of World War II forced them to flee, uprooting their lives and sense of identity like thousands of other Jews in the city. Weinberger's smooth writing style makes it easy to envision sitting in one of the city's countless coffeehouses on a mild spring day. Yet simultaneously, it is impossible to ignore its undercurrent of war-related anxiety, a constant reminder that a war continues to ravage its victims' lives long after its end. Although Weinberger's work might be classified as travel writing by some, she encompasses aspects of many other genres -- history, memoir, nonfiction, humor -- creating a memorable read.