Author Frederic Morton has died. I recommend these two books written by him.

The 11-year history of this blog contains numerous references to Vienna, and also to my fixation with the 19th- and 20th-century history of the Austro-Hungarian empire. That familiar mustard yellow and green color scheme deployed by the Habsburgs rocks my world, and I;ve been to almost every stop on my own self-designed Archduke Franz ferdinand heritage trail.

My first visit to Vienna was in 1985, a which point I'd already read Morton's book, A Nervous Splendor. After my third trip to the Austrian capital, he released Thunder at Twilight. To me, these remain essential texts for tourists.

Frederic Morton, Author Who Chronicled the Rothschilds, Dies at 90

... It was in his nonfiction that Mr. Morton most closely examined the Austria that gave him his identity. Most notably, in “A Nervous Splendor: Vienna, 1888-1889” (1979), he recounted a year in the life of the city and its well-known figures — including Freud, Mahler, Gustav Klimt and Arthur Schnitzler — and especially the events surrounding the murder by Crown Prince Rudolf of his teenage mistress and his subsequent suicide, an episode known as Mayerling for the hunting lodge where the killings occurred. (Another National Book Award finalist, that book also served as the basis for a stage musical, “Rudolf,” with music by Frank Wildhorn, the American composer of “Jekyll and Hyde.” It has been staged in Budapest, Vienna and elsewhere.)

Mr. Morton was born on Oct. 5, 1924, into a middle-class family named Mandelbaum — his father’s business made belt buckles for the Austrian Army — and as a boy he was known as Fritz, though his given name, his daughter said, may have been Frederic. In 1938, after the Anschluss, as the German annexation of Austria was known, his father was sent to Dachau, but he was later released. The family fled the country in 1939, first to London and shortly thereafter to New York, where the elder Mandelbaum changed his name, reportedly to be able to join a union known to be unfriendly to Jews.

Young Frederic went to a trade school and learned to be a baker, and later attended City College of New York and Columbia. From the first, he wrote his fiction in English, beginning with the novel “The Hound” (1947), the story of a privileged youth in 1939 Vienna and his comeuppance.

Mr. Morton’s other books include “Thunder at Twilight: Vienna 1913-14” (1989), a study of the city as Europe plunges toward World War I, and a memoir, “Runaway Waltz” (2005).