With the age of voyages of discovery in the 15th century, the curtain of history slowly came down on the late Middle Ages. Portuguese and Spanish seafarers set out to remeasure the dimensions of the earth. Numerous spices and fruits, which we would hardly be able to do without today, found their way to Europe for the first time. Columbus discovered America in 1492 on his quest for India. Six years later, it was left to Vasco da Gama to travel through the sea route to India sought by Columbus on the eastern route around Africa.

A dazzling biographical study of the greatest German philosopher of the nineteenth century by one of the most widely read German-language authors of the twentieth century. In this vivid and eloquent biography, Zweig largely eschews the traditional academic discourse on the philosopher's work, instead concentrating entirely on Nietzsche as a person, his habits, his passions and his obsessions. Stefan Zweig describes the tragedy of Nietzsche's existence, his seclusion from the world, in self-imposed isolation, in a compelling and impressive way.

"The others form the human being, I depict him; and here I present an individual who is quite poorly formed and whom I would certainly make largely differently if I had to reshape him. But now that's the way he is." This phrase from the famous essays of Michel de Montaigne outlines the character of the author and his work. Montaigne wrote his essays not from a position of certainty but from an awareness of his inadequacy. He thus reveals a level of critical self-reflection that, before his time, was rarely put on paper.

In this book, Stefan Zweig traces 12 fateful events of world history in his unique artistic style: from the conquest of the Byzantine capital of Constantinople by the Turks, to the Battle of Waterloo to Sir Robert Falcon Scott's tragic South Pole expedition. The human character and sometimes simple fate are decisive historic factors that have led to dramatic and lasting changes in the past. Often short, coincidental and highly dramatic moments have the potential to change the future of mankind in a decisive manner – the so called "Great Moments of Humanity".

"What journey within our immediate world today would be remotely as interesting, enchanting, instructive and exciting as that to Russia? While our Europe, and especially the capitals, are subject to the inexorably contemporary process of mutual assimilation and resemblance, Russia remains utterly unparalleled." Stephen Zweig, 1928. After Stefan Zweig's bourgeois world collapsed with the First World War, he went searching for alternative forms of society, which culminated in a journey through the at that time still young Soviet Union.

Immediately following the death of her young son, distraught and heartbroken, a woman sends a heart-wrenching letter to the only man she has ever loved, chronicling their love affair, opening with, "To you, who have never known me."

"Dickens is the highest poetic expression of the English tradition between the heroic century of Napoleon, the glorious past, and imperialism, the dream of his future. (...) Only when one hates the hypocritical narrow-mindedness of Victorian culture from the bottom of one's soul can one appreciates with full admiration the genius of a man who compelled us to find this disgusting world of sated sluggishness interesting and almost endearing, who redeemed life's most banal prose into poetry".

Lenin's journey in a sealed train took place in April 1917 during the First World War. The journey took Vladimir Ilyich Lenin together with other emigrants from Swiss exile through the German Reich via Scandinavia to Petrograd, today's Saint Petersburg. The "sealed train" was only used on the German part of the route. Lenin's arrival in Russia led to the 1917 revolution and the peace treaty between Russia and Germany in March 1918.

According to Stefan Zweig, no contemporary author, not even Marx or Nietzsche, delivered the radical spiritual shock that Tolstoy's works gave millions and millions of people around the world. But which Tolstoy are we talking about? For Zweig it is the essayist Tolstoy, the radical thinker and incorruptible anarchist. The Tolstoy who claims that the state is the great cover-up of social injustice through a complex system of violence based on parliaments, prisons, judges, tax collectors, the police and armies.

In the twilight of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, a young cavalry officer is invited to a dance at the home of a rich landowner. There - with a small act of attempted charity - he commits a simple faux pas. But from this seemingly insignificant blunder comes a tale of catastrophe arising from kindness and of honour poisoned by self-regard. Beware of Pity has all the intensity and the formidable sense of torment and of character of the very best of Zweig's work. Definitive translation by the award-winning Anthea Bell.