Triumph and Disaster: Five Historical Miniatures by Stefan Zweig (PDF)

Description

One of two beautifully designed hardback gift editions of Stefan Zweig’s breathlessly dramatic historical sketches, out in time for Christmas.A single Yes, a single No, a Too Soon or a Too Late makes that hour irrevocable for hundreds of generations while deciding the life of a single man or woman, of a nation, even the destiny of all humanity.Five vivid dramatizations of some of the most pivotal episodes in human history, from the Fall of Constantinople to Scott’s doomed attempt to reach the South Pole, bringing the past to life in brilliant technicolor.Included in this collection:”The Field of Waterloo”: A fascinating little known story of Napoleon’s defeat.”The Race to Reach the South Pole”: The failed expedition of the English to discover the South Pole first.”The Conquest of Byzantium”: Sultan Mahomet’s defeat of Byzantium through a neglected door.”The Sealed Train”: Lenin’s triumphant return from exile.”Wilson’s Failure”: The Treaty of Versailles is signed.

User’s Reviews

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐Zweig is a wonderful storyteller, we all know that. But the choice of the five short historical stories is amazing by their diversity: Waterloo, seen from the Napoleon side; Scott disastrous expedition to the South Pole as lived by Scott himself; the siege and conquest of Constantinople seen by the emperor Soliman, but also by the besieged Byzantines; the fatal trip of Lenin from Zurich to St Petersburg that shook the world, but that could have failed a hundred times; the lonely attempt and failure by Woodward Wilson to change the world for good. The outcome of each of these stories shown to have an improbable success and at time resulting in possibly avoidable failure. Zweig shows with an enormous empathy the element of chance in the history of the world.

⭐pocket-book size

⭐According to the Foreword of Stefan Zweig’s ‘Triumph and Disaster’ his miniature historical essays examine key moments which can be said to have changed the course of History.The five collected here relate to Napoleon’s defeat at Waterloo (1815); Scott’s failure to beat Amundsen to the South Pole (1912); Sultan Mahomet’s defeat of Byzantium (1453); Lenin’s arrival at the Finland Station (1917); and the signing of the Treaty of Versailles (1919), although it’s hard to see what substantial difference it made whether the first flag to fly at the South Pole was Norwegian or British.Zweig occasionally makes factual errors. He states, for example, that Petrograd changed its name to Petrograd in 1917, when it actually made that change in 1914. He also makes some heroic assumptions, such as that Napoleon would have dominated Europe had he won at Waterloo. He does not always consider all the factors which affected the outcome of events. Moreover, he is not entirely free from the charge of indulging in purple prose (“night always beguiles the senses with fantasy, confusing hope with the sweet poison of dreams”).However, one should be prepared to overlook all these faults because his vignettes really bring events, and especially their historical characters, vividly to life, and because at his best he writes magnificently (“They move through the icy [Antarctic] air as it drinks human breath for the first time in millennia”).In short, if one reads this book as a contribution to belles-lettres rather than to historical scholarship, it makes a superb, albeit slim, volume.

⭐Short bursts. Interesting and of course well written.

⭐Beautiful Book, and Zweig is worthy of the special treatment. I’m an avid Zweig reader, and was happy to find a couple short stories I did not know about. A must have in the library of any Zweig fan!!!

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