Jill Knight Weinberger

Vienna Voices: A Traveler Listens to the City of Dreams - Writing Travel Jill Knight Weinberger

DESCRIPTION A work of creative nonfiction, VIENNA VOICES: A TRAVELER LISTENS TO THE CITY OF DREAMS offers a nuanced portrait of the enigmatic "City of Dreams," whose intellectual and artistic culture reached its height at the end of the nineteenth century, only to be eclipsed in the twentieth by the collapse of the Habsburg empire and the rise of National Socialism. Inspired by Jill Knight Weinberger's twenty-year acquaintance with the city and the story of her husband's family, who as Viennese Jews were forced to flee in 1938, the book portrays two spheres of acquaintance with Vienna. There is the city of legendary charm and reverence for the arts, the city of Mozart, Schubert, Klimt and Freud; there is also its darker character, hedonistic and intolerant. Weinberger family history, historical anecdote, and personal observation are woven into a segmented structure that allows the reader to discover Vienna much as Weinberger did, in a juxtaposition of "voices" heard in the city's poetry, everyday language, history books, period documents, and as recalled by its citizens, past and present. ABOUT THE AUTHOR Jill Knight Weinberger (PhD, University of Connecticut) is an Associate Professor of English at Central Connecticut State University, where she teaches courses in creative writing and American literature. Her travel writing has appeared frequently in the New York Times, Boston Sunday Globe, and Los Angeles Times. In 2000, the Society of American Travel Writers Foundation recognized her writing with a Lowell Thomas Award for Travel Journalism.