<i>The House of Wittgenstein </i>is the grand saga of a brilliant and tragic Viennese family whose members included a famous philosopher and the world's greatest one-handed classical pianist.<br><br>The Wittgenstein family was one of the wealthiest, most talented, and most eccentric in European history, held together by a fanatical love of music yet torn apart by money, madness, conflicts of loyalty, and the upheaval of two world wars. Of the eight children, three committed suicide; Paul lost an arm in the war and yet stubbornly pursued a musical career; and Ludwig, the odd youngest son, is now regarded as one of the greatest philosophers of the twentieth century. Alexander Waugh, author of the acclaimed memoir <i>Fathers and Sons</i> and himself the offspring of a famous and eccentric family, tells their baroque tale with a novelistic richness to rival Thomas Mann&rsquo;s <i>Buddenbrooks</i>.<br>&#160;