Aristocratic Redoubt: The Austro-Hungarian Foreign Office on the Eve of the First World War is a study of the nobility who served in the foreign office prior to World War I. Following the lead of historians who are reexamining pre-industrial elites in England and Germany, Godsey deals with such facets of aristocratic life as education, wealth, religion, and ethnicity. He contends that although the pre-war aristocracy has been stereotyped as frivolous and decadent, the Austro-Hungarian nobility, and thus the monarchy, in fact had great staying power. This work is a social history of the bureaucracy of the Ballhausplatz primarily in the decade leading up to 1914, though it provides a thorough overview of the service during the entire Dualist period.