The links between industrialization, urbanization, and profound changes in the city soundscape are known to us all at an instinctual level. The problem of noise pollution is certainly a contemporary one, and Peter Payer lays out the health and economic concerns for Vienna in stark terms, suggesting that for each decibel that the noise levels rise, Viennese real estate loses one percent in value (21). Payer also enlivens this current dilemma with a vivid recreation of the complex soundscape of Vienna in its late imperial period, including the efforts of concerned citizens to limit and mitigate the city's growing noise levels. Payer is well-suited for this undertaking as a longtime historian of Vienna with deep roots both in its history and museum worlds.

Drawing upon a broad range of sources from technical literature to street signs to medical textbooks to egodocuments and of course contributions from Vienna's rich trove of journalism, Payer investigates the evolution of the soundscape of public spaces and the parallel alteration in acoustic perception by the public, focusing on the way changes in auditory surroundings were perceived and evaluated by the population and what effects these changes had on urban development and the design of public space. The work is divided into sections of unequal length, with the bulk of the book given over to two extensively sourced sections, one about the evolution of Vienna's soundscape and one about the corresponding development of antinoise activism. These longer sections are supported by smaller chapters placing the Viennese case into its larger historical context.

Payer begins by offering an economical overview of the way the history of sound and idea of noise fit in to the historiography and hierarchy of the senses, sketching out the terrain of historical treatments of sound but also situating the question within many other disciplines. He then plunges the reader into the world of Viennese sound, noting the frequency with which nineteenth-century writers used ocean metaphors to try to describe the layered ebb and flow of sound and silence in the city. Payer first lays out a thematically organized history of how the soundscape in Vienna changed, focusing particularly on church bells, street cars, animals and machines, and the disappearance of vendors and musicians in the streets. He next offers an acoustic topography of Vienna's various Bezirke including not only the central city but the industrial and agrarian outskirts as well. In all the several sections, Payer's descriptions are solidly based on piquant quotations culled through his careful research.

The second half of the book switches gears to focus on noise pollution, a concept already under consideration by 1900 if not by that name. Payer introduces the initial efforts to label noise, and particularly new “modern” noises as potential health hazards. Noise, according to cultural critics and psychologists alike, was a crucial cause of the “era of nervousness” experienced by modern urbanites of the fin de siècle (126). But irritation over noise also clearly had a class component. It was the bourgeoisie and in particular the Bildungsbürgertum who seemed most ready to decry the sounds that were not lovely to their ears, much of this frustration spilling across the pages of Vienna's feuilleton.

Antinoise associations, developing first in the United States and Great Britain, swiftly gained ground in Germany and Central Europe as well. Here Payer focuses particularly on the publications of Theodor Lessing, a journalist and philosopher, particularly his 1908 work “Der Lärm.” Lessing saw noise specifically as an element of class struggle, as additional coals heaped upon the heads of the workers by the middle classes. Lessing was involved in the antinoise campaigns throughout Central Europe, including in Vienna where he had the support of local academics and reformers as well as notables such as Hugo von Hofmannsthal. The campaign never gained broad support, and indeed was frequently mocked. The Viennese association rapidly ran into money trouble and folded by 1911.

So what noises were particularly irksome? Essentially, all those that most of us would find annoying today: noise from anything used for transport—be it a train, automobile, streetcar, bicycle, or horse and cart—was already assaulting the ears of Austrians in the turn of the last century. Loud music, both live and recorded, children on the playground, and barking dogs also added to the cacophony. Even Arthur Schopenhauer complained about horses and carriages—and even the cracks of whips.

Payer then demonstrates the full range of potential solutions to the noise problem. Interestingly, many of these were technologically driven mitigation systems such as asphalt for paving, electric motors and rubber tires, and updating housing with double doors or cork-covered walls. But Payer also discusses plans for noise-canceling devices for the ear and, lastly, legal remedies and efforts to better consider noise when planning city expansion. Ultimately, Payer suggests, the noise-afflicted in Vienna most successfully abated their noise problem by fleeing to the country in the summer months.

Payer ends his work with two brief codas, one on the nature of the artistic-aesthetic state of the question and one that swiftly brings the problem of noise and the interest in sound up to date, assessing the sustainability of sent acoustic sensitivities and highlighting important new trends. The book works beautifully as a catalog of thick description. Each element discussed is richly sourced, and the better the reader knows Vienna, the more enjoyable the details become. The sheer volume of description does come at the cost of an underdevelopment of connective arguments, but on balance this seems like a manageable price to pay.