Strauss's "Radetzky March," signature tune of one of Europe's most powerful regimes, presides over Joseph Roth's account of three generations of the von Trotta family in the years preceding the 1918 collapse of the Austro-Hungarian empire. Grandfather, son, and grandson are equally dependent on the empire: the first for his ennoblement after heroic action on the battlefield; the second for the tradition of selfless devotion to civic duty that makes him a meticulous servant of an administration whose failure he can neither comprehend nor survive; the third for the family standards of conduct that he cannot attain but by which he is too enfeebled to rebel. Roth's 1932 novel is a masterly black comedy about the nightmare that is history.