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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".

The conquest of Constantinople in 1453 by a besieging army of around 80,000 men led by the Ottoman Sultan Mehmed II ended the Byzantine Empire. The city's defense was in the hands of Emperor Constantine XI, who had 7,000 to 10,000 soldiers at his disposal and, likely, fell during the last storm on the city. The fall of the Byzantine Empire also marked the final rise of the Ottoman Empire to become a major power. The conquest has a high symbolic value in both Turkish and Western European reception.

1834: Johann August Sutter, a cloth merchant based in Burgdorf in the canton of Bern in Switzerland, went bankrupt with fraudulent intent and was subsequently wanted on an arrest warrant. To escape the authorities, Suter immigrated to the United States and briefly became the richest man in the world thanks to his entrepreneurial activities and land holdings. Much gold was found on his California land during the gold rush and prospectors contested his ownership. In the end, Suter lost his entire fortune.

Robert Falcon Scott was a British naval officer and polar explorer. He led the Discovery Expedition (1901-1904) and the Terra Nova Expedition (1910-1913), two voyages of exploration during the so-called Golden Age of Antarctic exploration. He is among the first ten people to reach the geographic South Pole. His Terra Nova expedition developed into a competition with Norwegian polar explorer Roald Amundsen. Scott reached the pole on January 18, 1912, realizing that Amundsen and his crew of four had preempted him by about a month.

The Battle of Waterloo on June 18, 1815 was Napoleon Bonaparte's last battle. It took place around 15 km south of Brussels near the village of Waterloo, then part of the Kingdom of the United Netherlands and now in Belgium. The defeat of the French led by Napoleon against the Allied troops under the English General Wellington and the Prussian Field Marshal Blücher ended Napoleon's rule of the Hundred Days and led to the end of the French Empire with his final abdication on June 22, 1815.

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.

Stefan Zweig dedicated this largely biographical work to the founder of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud. Zweig acknowledges Freud's scientific contributions and highlights some weaknesses of his fellow countryman. Freud's actual achievement is less to be found in scientific detail, but in the multitude of his contributions with which he enabled and inspired the thinking, rethinking and research of many of his successors. Zweig describes the life of Freud and the genesis of psychoanalysis with his usual linguistic virtuosity.

The fame of the The Royal Game is evident in the number of translations. The last work of the Austrian writer Stefan Zweig can be read today in over 60 languages. The first translation into English appeared in New York in 1944. In Germany, the book has become a constant bestseller. The first-person narrator learns of the presence of the world chess champion Mirko Czentovic on a boat trip from New York to Buenos Aires. Together with his acquaintance Mc Connor and other chess players, the first-person narrator manages to challenge the world champion to a game of chess.

Stanley Kubrick, the great director, died only days after submitting the first cut of his film "Eyes Wide Shut" to Warner Brothers. The basis of his film is the novella Rhapsody: A Dream Novel, also known as Dream Story written in 1925 by the Austrian writer Arthur Schnitzler. Interestingly, it was first published in installments in the magazine Die Dame (English: The Lady), the first illustrated magazine in Germany to cater to the interests of modern women. Which says a bit about the targeted audience of the author.

Over the course of 14 billion years, humanity has gained the ability not only to imagine the future, but to design and engineer it. Entertaining and profound, Future Rising by Dr Andrew Maynard, provides a highly original perspective on our relationship with the future. Written to be easy to pick up and hard to stop listening to, Future Rising starts at the big bang and traces a pathway along the emergence of intelligent life, through what makes humans uniquely capable of creating different futures, to the profound responsibilities that this comes with.