This is probably Stefan Zweig's most famous book. In it he brings to its peak the art of historical and literary miniature. Very varied are the events that he brings together under the title of "Stellar Moments": the decline of the Eastern empire, in which the fall of Constantinople at the hands of the Turks in 1453 acquires its most visible sign; the birth of Handel's "Messiah" in 1741; the defeat of Napoleon in 1815; Dostoevsky's pardon just before his execution in 1849; Lenin's trip to Russia in 1917... "Each of these stellar moments" writes Stefan Zweig rightly "marks a course for decades and centuries", so that we can see in them key turning points in history, that we read in these fourteen historical miniatures with the fascination that Zweig always produces in us.