What a combination: Kraus, the man who first denuded the emperor Freud, and Szasz, the man who methodically stripped psychiatry/psychotherapy of any scientific pretensions. Aside from a lesson in history, a major debunking of psychiatric fraud, and an interesting biography, this book is a lot of fun. Kraus ranks with Twain and Mencken as an aphorist, and Szasz's translations of the original German make the quotes ring clear and powerful.

Freud tried to cozy up to him (and was rejected); his work was fundamental to Wittgenstein's philosophico-linguistic theories, and three times he was nominated for the Nobel prize in literature by French academicians; yet he remains essentially unknown in this country, despite this marvelous exegesis of his work by Thomas Szasz, which was published in 1976.

Karl Kraus (1874-1936) was, and continues to be, an embarrassment to many intellectuals. His punishment has been to have his work misread, misinterpreted, untranslated, and finally ignored. He has been attacked as being antisemitic ("self-hating Jew"), mentally disturbed, and (symbolically) envious of his father's penis.

Kraus's commentaries and aphorisms concerning psychiatry and psychoanalysis are delightful, powerful, and as accurate today as when he uttered them. Szasz, who has been fighting the good battle against psychiatric abuses and pretensions all of his career, is the ideal person to introduce Americans to Kraus and his work. A short, well indexed book. Worth having to keep and to read over from time to time.

The most telling line against Freudianism: "Psycho-analysts are the disease posing as the cure". Kraus had a real nose for blather and imposture, and dissected the Vienna circle around Freud as Mencken did the fundementalists. An exposure to Kraus is a sure and certain innoculation of the psychobabble that passes nowdays as charcter analysis. Take two hours to slowly devour, digest, and delight in this tasty intellectual treat.

Compiled out of quotations, newspaper articles, different folk songs and own experiences with Austria-Hungary and Germany through World War One Karl Kraus wrote this book to show the people of the time after the War their own absurd behavement. The book is written as a Drama, but without a continuous story it shows the war with examples of Journalists, Politics, Aristocrats, Workers, Soldiers. It is an important forefather of Brecht's epic drama. To understand the different quotations you should know a bit about the Austrian and German history and the Emperors of the time.

Karl Kraus is still well known in Germany, and deserves to be better known here. THE LAST DAYS OF MANKIND, 'a play to be performed on Mars' is one of the most trenchant satires written this century. Kraus compiled the play from newspaper articles, official bulletins, and overheard conversations during World War One in Vienna. He actually performed excerpts from this damning indictment of the human race during the war. I wish that someone would translate all of this book from the German; one flaw of this edition is the note early on which states that 'since modern Americans are not familiar with minutiae of the life of the Emperor Franz Joseph, these chapters have been cut.' With all due respect, if we did not know something about the later Habsburgs we would not be reading THE LAST DAYS OF MANKIND in the first place. The lowest pit in Kraus' hell is reserved for those vultures who treated wartime reporting as popular entertainment--which makes him an uncomfortably modern writer. Please, please beg borrow or steal a copy of this book and try to get it reprinted in a full translation!

Kraus is almost unknown to Americans, but he was one of the shining social critics of the 20th century. He was the first major debunker of Freudian nonsense. He wrote brilliantly on language, politics, and culture. He was, like all great critics, fearless.

This book is a mixed presentation, including many quotes that seem outdated or inscrutible. It also has the editor's odd and distorted rendering of Kraus.

If you are unfamilair with Kraus you will be better served by Thomas Szasz's "Anti-Freud : Karl Kraus's Criticism of Psychoanalysis and Psychiatry."...The Szasz book provides fascinating biographical info about Kraus. Szasz has also nicely translated many of Kraus's pithiest and funniest aphorisms.

This book heralds the emergence of two great minds.
Karl Kraus, who because of his fearless critique of the media, politics, religion, and the other humbugs of the world Hitler & Co. was trying to shove down the world's throat...and Mr. McVity, who not only translates the difficult work of Kraus brilliantly, but provides, in his concluding essay, a history and examination of Kraus and his world, and great insights into those troubling times, whose wake we are still witnessing... but also rises, in his own writing, to such heights and depths as to be truly humbling. And yet I am excited that such a mind might surface in such a time as this...where content nor form offer much to chew on, beyond the official story and the infantile rant.

Share this wondrous book with your friends, but realize it may return dog-eared, pages now sea-foam green in highlighter. Sharing, after all, is a very Krausian thing to do. Karl Kraus donated much of his proceeds to homeless shelters, low-cost housing, Quakers caring for starving tubercular children, and the like. And Kraus shared ideas and art with his friends Brecht, Wittgenstein, Schoenberg, Rilke, and others whose greatness is already well-known, perhaps because of their being less a thorn in the side of the system.
As Kraus once said, "Art serves to rinse out our eyes."
But I would also suggest that his, and McVity's, art serves to rinse out our ears as well. Especially since our ears are now filled with the likes of...well...you know! But "Kraus named names." Read all about it! And then imagine random names such as Rush, O'Reilly, and others that miraculously make their way to the top of the list, forgetting perhaps that the list is boogerpasted to the wall of a sandbox. [Head shakes left then right. Repeat.]

I am pleased to give this book 5-stars, but regret that I couldn't give it more. As Lin Yutang once said: "I regard the discovery of one's favorite author as the most critical event in one's intellectual development. There is such a thing as affinity of spirits, and among authors of ancient and modern times, one must try to find an author whose spirit is akin with his own."

I eagerly await the next offerings of this protean mind among us, and urge that he not limit himself to translations, as his own writing is such a pleasure, and translations do take so dreadfully long...