"Habsburgs ruled much of Europe for centuries. From modest origins as minor German nobles, the family used fabricated documents, invented genealogies, savvy marriages, and military conquest on their improbable ascent, becoming the continent's most powerful dynasty. By the mid-fifteenth century, the Habsburgs gained controlled of the Holy Roman Empire, and by the early sixteenth century, their lands stretched across the continent and far beyond it....

"Central Europe has long been infamous as a region beset by war, a place where, historically, empires clashed and sieges from the east toppled kingdoms and enslaved peoples. Many view the region-comprising present-day Germany, Poland, Hungary, Austria, Slovenia, and Romania, among other countries--as united only by the shared experience of invasions launched by foreign powers, from the Huns of the fourth century, to the Swedes of the seventeenth,...