The book under review is the long-awaited second volume of Edward Timms' full-length study on the Austrian satirist Karl Kraus. The first volume, Karl Kraus Apocalyptic Satirist: Culture and Catastrophe in Habsburg Vienna (New Haven, 1986), subsequently translated into Italian, Spanish, and German, set a landmark and remains a central reference in Kraus criticism. The second volume fulfills the high standards set by the 1986 publication and carries the account further, from the end of World War I to Kraus's death in 1936. The central focus is thus with Kraus's position in the Austrian First Republic, a position that would quickly move from enthusiastic endorsement of the new state of affairs and support of the Austrian Social Democratic Party, to growing disillusionment, and finally to open conflict and ultimately a break with the party. The final part, “Into the Third Reich,” pays thorough attention to the consequences of the rise of Nazism and the establishment of the Nazi dictatorship in Germany and deals in detail with one of the most difficult topics in Kraus criticism, the satirist's final writings and his sympathy for Dollfuß, in whom he placed the desperate hope for the possibility of resisting Austria's annexation by Hitler.

Timms' method consists of moving relentlessly from text to context and back to text, mobilizing a vast array of references and following closely, with accurate and formidably knowledgeable attention to detail, the many ramifications of each particular problem without, at the same time, losing sight of the general framework. While parts 1 (“Apocalypse Postponed”), 4 (“Defending the Republic”), and 6 (“Into the Third Reich”) concentrate more on the political context, parts 2 (“Culture and the Press”), 3 (“The Creative Origin”), and 5 (“The Politics of Performance”) deal with central topics in Kraus's satirical strategy and revisit central elements of his critique of the press, of his conception of language, his Jewishness, his relationship to the literary avant-garde of the time, his relationship to the theater, and to cultural memory. On the whole, Timms is thus able to provide what amounts to a cultural and political history of the period, while, at the same time, offering central insights into Kraus's literary endeavors. Die Fackel constitutes the prism through which his argument is cast. However, since this argument constantly resorts to a number of references that help put Kraus's texts into perspective, it consistently avoids the risk of paraphrase, to which so much of Kraus's criticism has fallen prey, and is able to maintain a critical stance throughout.

Not the least among the many merits of the first volume is its breaking away from the stubborn practice of blindly identifying Kraus the author with Kraus the I-persona of Die Fackel, thus opening the way to more sophisticated analyses of Kraus's discourse that would take into account its crucial fictional dimension. In the second volume, since the accent is often on polemical, rather than on satirical, texts, this line of argument often appears subdued by an interpretation of the text as a simple document of Kraus's position toward this or that cultural or political development (although in the two final chapters Timms is able to offer a particularly helpful analysis of one of Kraus's most difficult texts, Third Walpurgis Night). Nevertheless, the book successfully questions a number of persistent clichés about an author who remains relatively little known even in the German-speaking world, much less among the English-language readership. As the author points out, a full-length version of Kraus's masterpiece, The Last Days of Mankind, is still lacking. The relevance of Kraus to current scholarly trends, in particular his seismographic method of discourse analysis underlying his exposure of the press, is thus not just stated but demonstrated in detail. At the same time, crucial aspects of Kraus's self-stylization in Die Fackel—for example, the image of embattled isolation that is set by Timms against the intricate network of relationships in which Kraus was involved—can be the object of critical revaluation.

Taken together, both volumes provide not just an illuminating picture of Kraus's achievements, put into perspective and carefully contextualized, but also essential elements for a biography that has yet to be written. They will remain a standard reference for many years to come.