Background
Born Fritz Mandelbaum in Vienna, Morton was the son of a blacksmith who specialized in forging (manufacturing) imperial medals. In the wake of the Anschluss of 1938, his father was arrested, but later released.
(Berek, a young penniless Jew of eighteen is struggling to...)
Berek, a young penniless Jew of eighteen is struggling to make a home of Turk Place, a desolate street that, in 1873 Vienna, was little more than a Gypsy encampment. But Berek believes fiercely in his own power to forge miracles. Taking the caretaker's daughter as his bride, Berek is confident he can thrive on faith. When a mysterious piece of stone comes into his possession, he and his wife believe their prayers have been answered; the stone may be a holy fragment of Jerusalem's Wailing Wall. This relic, no larger than a brick, proves to transfigure the couple's lives. They make Turk Place their home and three generations of Turk Place residents share the legacy of the Brick. For six decades, the family perseveres in the face of tumultuous events -- World War I, the shattering of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and the Great Depression. But Hitler's "final solution" forces them to make an impossible choice: flee the Nazis or remain and perish.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0743252209/?tag=2022091-20
(One of the most revered essayists and novelists of his ge...)
One of the most revered essayists and novelists of his generation, Frederic Morton has captured with matchless immediacy the glamour of Vienna before World War I and the storied opulence of the Rothschild family in his bestselling and award-winning works. Now, in his first book in more than fifteen years, he delivers a luminous look at his own unique pursuit of the American dream. Like many Austrian boys in 1936, the author idolizes Fritz Austerlitz, the Austrian American who went to Hollywood and emerged as Fred Astaire. When his family is forced to flee Vienna, Fritz Mandelbaum becomes Fred Morton and immigrates to New York City. Though he does not learn English until he is sixteen years old, Morton nonetheless goes on to succeed as a writer. The author sets out ten scenes from his pilgrim life and his remarkable road to success: from watching a poorly dubbed Astaire in Vienna to delivering apricot tarts as a baker's assistant in New York; from Salt Lake City where as a young English instructor he met Vladimir Nabokov to a Christmas spent with the Rothschilds at Château Mouton. Runaway Waltz is a soulful, beautifully written portrait of one man's extraordinary quest for fulfillment and enduring transformation.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0743225392/?tag=2022091-20
(NATIONAL BOOK AWARD NOMINEE Long regarded as the most ma...)
NATIONAL BOOK AWARD NOMINEE Long regarded as the most magical of the European dynasties, the Rothschild family today remains one of the most powerful and wealthy in the world. No family in the past two centuries has been so constantly at the center of Europe's great events, has featured such varied and spectacular personalities, has had anything close to the wealth of the Rothschilds. In Frederic Morton's classic tale, the family is brought vividly to life. Here you'll meet characters as lively as you can imagine: Mayer, long-time advisor to Germany's princes, who broke through the barriers of a Frankfurt ghetto and placed his family on the road to wealth and power; Lord Alfred, who maintained a private train, private orchestra (which he conducted), and private circus (of which he was ringmaster); Baron Philippe, whose rarefied vintages bear labels created by great artists, among them Picasso, Dali, and Haring; and Kathleen Nica Rothschild de Koenigswarter, the "jazz baroness," in whose arms Charlie Parker died. The family itself has been at the center of some of the most crucial moments in history: the defeat of Napoleon at Waterloo, the development of the Suez Canal, the introduction of Jews in the House of Lords. Through it all, the Rothschild name has continued to represent the family ideal: a shrewd business and financial sense, activity in the Jewish community and the arts, and an always luxurious-and often eccentric-lifestyle. Nominated for a National Book Award when it was first published in 1962, Frederic Morton's The Rothschllds is here reissued with a new afterword by the author, bringing the tale of this extraordinary family to the present.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0689102046/?tag=2022091-20
(On January 30, 1889, at the champagne-splashed hight of t...)
On January 30, 1889, at the champagne-splashed hight of the Viennese Carnival, the handsome and charming Crown Prince Rudolf fired a revolver at his teenaged mistress and then himself. The two shots that rang out at Mayerling in the Vienna Woods echo still. Frederic Morton, author of the bestselling Rothschilds, deftly tells the haunting story of the Prince and his city, where, in the span of only ten months, "the Western dream started to go wrong." In Rudolf's Vienna moved other young men with striking intellectual and artistic talents—and all as frustrated as the Prince. Among them were: young Sigmund Freud, Gustav Mahler, Theodor Herzl, Gustav Klimt, and the playwright Arthur Schnitzler, whose La Ronde was the great erotic drama of the fin de siecle. Morton studies these and other gifted young men, interweaving their fates with that of the doomed Prince and the entire city through to the eve of Easter, just after Rudolf's body is lowered into its permanent sarcophagus and a son named Adolf Hitler is born to Frau Klara Hitler.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/014005667X/?tag=2022091-20
Born Fritz Mandelbaum in Vienna, Morton was the son of a blacksmith who specialized in forging (manufacturing) imperial medals. In the wake of the Anschluss of 1938, his father was arrested, but later released.
Bachelor of Science, College City New York, 1947. Master of Arts, New School Social Research, 1949.
The family fled to Britain in 1939 and migrated to New York City next year, when the senior Mandelbaum also changed the family name in order to be able to join an anti-Semitic labor union. Morton worked as a baker but began studying literature in 1949. He returned to Austria in 1962 to marry his fiancée, Marcia, whom he had met at college.
From 1959, Morton worked as a columnist for several American periodicals including The New York Times, Esquire, and Playboy.
He died at the Hilton hotel in Vienna at the age of 90 on April 20, 2015. 1963: Author of the Year (Anti-Defamation League).
(A National Book Award Finalist from the bestselling Frede...)
(One of the most revered essayists and novelists of his ge...)
(What do Stalin, Trotsky, Hitler, Tito, Freud, the Emperor...)
( Thunder at Twilight is a landmark historical vision, dr...)
(On January 30, 1889, at the champagne-splashed hight of t...)
(NATIONAL BOOK AWARD NOMINEE Long regarded as the most ma...)
(In July 1916, Fritz Mandelbaum, a junior officer in Austr...)
(Berek, a young penniless Jew of eighteen is struggling to...)
(copyright 1979, first published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson ...)
(story of the Rothchild family including a genealogy)
(Dust jacket art by Paul Bacon His seventh book.)
(Dust jacket art by Ismar David. His fourth book. The stor...)
Member Author's Guild (executive council), P.E.N.
Married Marcia Colman, March 28, 1957. 1 daughter, Rebecca.