This is probably the most famous book by Stefan Zweig. In it, the art of historical and literary miniature takes to its peak. The events that it gathers under the title of Stellar Moments are very varied: 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 moments before his execution in 1849; Lenin's trip to Russia in 1917 ... "Each of these stellar moments," Stefan Zweig writes correctly, "marks a course for decades and centuries," so that we can see in them some key turning points of history, which we read in these fourteen historical miniatures with the fascination that Zweig always produces.
