I'm interested in reading about Habsburg Austria--from roughly the period of the Privilegium Maius (1358) to it's ultimate disintegration at the end of WWI.
I realize this is a huge time range so I am sure it may not be possible to find one or even two titles that cover all of it. But if anyone has any suggestions that cover at least some of this range in good depth I would love to learn as much as I can. I'm on a quest to become familiar with the general history of all the historical European great powers from the early modern period onward.
I am probably most interested in the part of their dominions that centered on the contiguous possessions that included Austria, Hungary, and Bohemia but am not opposed to reading about their other presence in places like Spain, the Netherlands, and Italy.
So I went to graduate school for this and focused more on urban centers in Mitteleuropa but here are some titles that you may be interested in that cover the late period.
Beller, Stephen. Vienna and the Jews, 1867 – 1938: A Cultural History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990.
Bérenger, Jean. A History of the Habsburg Empire, 1700 – 1918. Translated by C. A. Simpson. Harlow: Addison Wesley, 1990.
Deák, István. Beyond Nationalism: A Social and Political History of the Habsburg Officer Corps, 1848 – 1918. New York: Oxford University Press, 1990.
Gyani, Gabor. Identity and the Urban Experience: Fin-de-siècle Budapest. Translated by Thomas J. DeKornfield. New York: Columbia University Press, 2004.
Hanak, Peter. The Garden and the Workshop: Essays on the Cultural History of Vienna and Budapest. Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1998.
Kann, Robert. A History of the Habsburg Empire, 1529 – 1918. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1974.
King, Jeremy. Budweisers Into Czechs and Germans: A Local History of Bohemian Politics, 1848 – 1918. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002.
Lukacs, John. Budapest 1900: A Historical Portrait of a City and its Culture. New York: Weindenfeld & Nicolson, 1988.
Schorske, Carl E. Fin-De-Siècle Vienna: Politics and Culture. New York: Knopf, 1980.
Spector, Scott. Prague Territories: National Conflict and Cultural Innovation in Franz Kafka’s Fin de Siècle. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000.
Taylor, A. J. P. The Habsburg Monarchy, 1809 – 1918. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1976.
As you mention, finding a comprehensive and detailed book (in English) that covers from 1358-1918 is going to prove rather difficult. So far I am yet to encounter one.
Four titles I know to be well respected which focus primarily on Eastern and Central Europe but only focus on the later years are -
Sked, Alan, The Decline and Fall of the Habsburg Empire, 1815-1918, (Longman, London and New York, 1989)
Taylor, A. J. P., The Habsburg Monarchy, 1809-1918, (Hamish Hamilton, London, 1948)
Okey, Robin, The Habsburg Monarchy c.1765-1918, (Macmillan, London, 2001)
Jászi, Oscar, The Dissolution of The Hapsburg Monarchy, (University of Chicago Press, 1961)
Also there is nothing wrong with starting at the end picture (in 1918) with the dissolution of The Hapsburgs into its successor states. In that sense it is easier to grasp many of the key themes that are sometimes slow in materializing from a chronological approach... The above are good starting points but for a broader more textbook approach aimed at undergrads I can recommend
For my graduate history class im reading Brendon Simm's "Europe: The Struggle for Supremacy 1453- the Present." The main thesis is that Germany was the fulcrum to most movements and events during this time. It's pretty interesting.