Though long associated with a small group of coffeehouse elites around the turn of the twentieth century, Viennese "modernist" culture had roots that extended much earlier, and beyond the rarefied sphere of high culture. In Comical Modernity, Heidi Hakkarainen looks at Vienna in the second half of the nineteenth century, a period of dramatic urban renewal during which the city's rapidly changing face was a mainstay of humorous magazines, books, and other publications aimed at middle-class audiences. Hakkarainen shows how humor provided a widely accessible means of negotiating an era of radical change, allowing a broader understanding of the cultural history of nineteenth-century Vienna.