Looking for a good book recommendation about this. After traveling through central Europe, a couple of times over the last 18 months I have become very interested in this topic.

It's not a book, but I remember really enjoying this documentary several years ago…

https://www.bbcselect.com/watch/vienna-empire-dynasty-and-dream/

Just to clarify, are you interested in the Austro-Hungarian Empire or the Hapsburg family itself?

Both I guess.

I did finally get a book on this and I'm almost done. "The Habsburgs" by Martyn Rady. I'm really enjoying it and I've learned a great deal. I highly recommend for anyone interested in this subject.

I wish that Emperor Franz Josef could have been around long enough to experience the collapse of his glorious empire … the empire that he was striving to preserve when he declared war on Serbia and Russia in the summer of 1914.

Of course, no discussion of the Hapsburgs is complete without a mention of the Hapsburg Jaw, a physical characteristic of the Spanish Hapsburgs that resulted from the inbreeding of certain European royal families.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/distinctive-habsburg-jaw-was-likely-result-royal-familys-inbreeding-180973688/

As in good King Charles II

This is a good (and funny) series about the Hapsburg empire in World War I. The other pic is my son starting the war, taken at the museum of military history in Vienna.

There's an Austrian miniseries about Maximilian I and his wife, Marie of Burgundy, and their dynastic fight with the French over territory and the Imperial crown. It's in German and French, so I watched it with subtitles, and probably lost a lot in translation, but the locations, period authenticity and camera work were good. I can't find it on an active streaming service, but here's a link: Prime Video: Maximilian. Maybe it will come back around someday.