Nationalist dreams and nightmares Mike Macnair reviews 'Workers and nationalism: Czech and German Social Democracy in Habsburg Austria, 1890-1918' by JS Beneš and 'The Fiume crisis: life in the wake of the Habsburg empire' by DK Reill Both these books are about nationalism and the break-up of a larger multinational state regime. Reviewing Jakub Beneš’s book, published in 2017, is perhaps rather belated, but it provides fundamental background to that of Dominique Kirchner Reill: Beneš’s book is about the growth of nationalism in the late 19th-early 20th century workers’ movement in Austria-Hungary; Reill’s is a microcosm-study of the disastrous consequences of the implementation of nationalist programmes.