Schorske begins by reflecting on his own vocation as it was shaped by the historical changes he has seen sweep across political and academic culture. Then he offers a European sampler of ways in which 19th-century European intellectuals used conceptions of the past to address the problems of their day: the city as community and artifact; the function of art; social dislocation. Narrowing his focus to fin-de-siecle Vienna in a second group of essays, he analyzes the emergence of a historical modernism in that city. Against the background of Austria's persistent, conflicting Baroque and Enlightenment traditions, Schorske examines three Viennese pioneers of modernism - Adolf Loos, Gustav Mahler, and Sigmund Freud -- as they sought new orientation in their fields.