Rating: 
Summary: history assignment
Review: By far the most poignant book I have ever read (and I read a lot.) Every impression and observation has a heightened importance when you know the author and his wife both killed themselves not long after the book was published during the worst years of WWII. Brilliantly recreates the pre-WWI Europe that disappeared after 1914 and is only now maybe being recreated in an updated style. Wonderfully describes the tumultuous years between the wars and demonstrates the despair of the worst years of WWII. Also where else can you read good things about the AustroHungarian Empire these days? Would highly recommend this book for anyone between the ages of 10 and 100. Why don't they use books like this in high school and college history classes to make the past come alive? Also enjoyable because it tells things like they were at the time before 50 years of revisionist and deconstructed history have twisted everything around. The real tragedy of this story is that Mr. Zweig and his wife did not wait another 18 months before killing themselves. They may not have found it necessary once the Allies started defeating the Axis powers in Europe and the Pacific. Still Mr. Zweig's World of Yesterday was irreparably destroyed and would never return.
Rating: 
Summary: Why did nobody ever tell me about this book?
Review: By far the most poignant book I have ever read (and I read a lot.) Every impression and observation has a heightened importance when you know the author and his wife both killed themselves not long after the book was published during the worst years of WWII. Brilliantly recreates the pre-WWI Europe that disappeared after 1914 and is only now maybe being recreated in an updated style. Wonderfully describes the tumultuous years between the wars and demonstrates the despair of the worst years of WWII. Also where else can you read good things about the AustroHungarian Empire these days? Would highly recommend this book for anyone between the ages of 10 and 100. Why don't they use books like this in high school and college history classes to make the past come alive? Also enjoyable because it tells things like they were at the time before 50 years of revisionist and deconstructed history have twisted everything around. The real tragedy of this story is that Mr. Zweig and his wife did not wait another 18 months before killing themselves. They may not have found it necessary once the Allies started defeating the Axis powers in Europe and the Pacific. Still Mr. Zweig's World of Yesterday was irreparably destroyed and would never return.
Rating:
Summary: A real experience
Review: From its introduction: "So choose and speak for me,ye memories, and at least give some reflection of my life before it sinks into the dark!" to its final despairing end, this book is a tour de force. It was first published in 1943, and since Zweig and his second wife committed suicide on Feb. 23, 1942, I presume it was the last thing he wrote that was published. It is of interest that his first wife in 1946 published a book about her first ex-husband (entitled "Stefan Zweig"). The World of Yesterday says nothing about his marriages, but his wife's book succinctly describes how she learned of her husband's affair: "Hastening back to the hotel, I entered my husband's study from the bedroom. Unfortunately it was an inopportune moment."
Rating:
Summary: I love this book
Review: If, like me, you are interested in the European world that was crippled by WWI and then finished by WWII, you will love this book. Zweig was fully aware that the world of his youth was gone forever, and he wanted to describe that world, the good and the bad, for future generations. While it is generally not a good idea to romanticize the past, Zweig's book forces us to recognize that, in many respects, we are less free, less cultured, and less sophisticated than our great-grandparents. I am certain I will read this book again to reminisce about a world I never knew.
Rating:
Summary: So close, so far away
Review: In the 1920s and 1930s Stefan Zweig was one of the most popular wirters of the world, best known for his biographies. After the Nazis had driven him from his native Austria because he happened to be Jewish, he tried to remember his own life. As he stresses in a preface, he does this not because he thinks that his own life is important, but to give as a view of the exciting times he experienced.Zweig was born in 1881, so the times he describes are not more than 100 years away from ours - and yet it is all incredibly far away, even to a European like myself. Zweig describes pre-war Austria-Hungary as a "world of security" where nothing ever changed. The Jewish Bourgeoisie to which he belonged were obsessed with culture; even as adolescents, Zweig and his friends tried to get hold of the latest in German and French poetry. And to understand what you have heard about Freud, just read the chapter about the sexual hypocrisy among Vienna's upper class around 1900! World War I changes this world of tolerance and security for ever. Zweig's country is broken up into ridiculous fragments, and the German-speaking countries are in a state of unrest which will eventually lead them into the self-destruction of Nazi barbarism. At the same time, the 1920s are a time of unprecedented creativity for German and Austrian writers (Thomas Mann, Musil, Rilke, Kafka etc.). Zweig shows us this wonderful world of letters, not just in his own country and language, but also in France, Italy, England. He meets Joyce, Rilke, G.B. Shaw, H.G. Wells and Yeats. Zweig's book shows you the riches European culture had to offer before World War II put an end to it. Zweig himself tried to start a new life in Brazil, but when the Nazis had conquered all of Europe in 1942, Zweig gave up all hope and committed suicide. Zweig's tragic fate mirrors that of Europe in his time. This book should be read by anyone who is interested in European culture in the 20th century.
Rating:
Summary: Simply wonderful
Review: It is one of the best books I have ever read. Unfortunately, some people trying to get some knowledge about the history of that time, are not satisfied with this book. But, it is NOT A HISTORY BOOK.
Zweig is not trying to give information about those times. His observations are not his object but his tools to illustrate his great humanistic messages; and he does this in a very kind and as simple as powerful language.
Rating:
Summary: A window into a fascinating period of European culture
Review: Stefan Zweig was a quintessential man of letters whose work and sensibility come to life in this memoir. He was a key participant in European literary culture during the early part of the century, and was a contemporary and colleague of many great writers and thinkers. The book portrays the type of privileged life into which he was born, and poignantly documents the degeneration of his beloved Europe into a state of barbarity. This book is fascinating as much for what it includes--descriptions of his work, his associations, the events that shaped the time--as for what it does not--any mention of his personal relationships with his wives or with those outside his cultural life. One learns about the man mostly indirectly; this is not a confessional memoir as much as a document of a brilliant man's literary values and intellectual life, and how they were shattered by the destruction of war.
Rating: 
Summary: A sensitive and intelligent view of 20th century Europe
Review: This book puts you behind the observant eyes and inside the thoughtful mind of a man who lived very much in the world -- the world being that of Europe in the first half of the 20th century.. An Austrian Jew born in late 19-century Vienna, Stefan Zweig came of age in a city that was the capital of a centuries-old empire and one of the cultural centers of Europe. He died by his own hand 61 years later in exile from a Europe in the grip of Hitler's savagery. Through his astute and urbane eyes we see the optimism of pre-World War I Europe, the division of Europe into two hostile sides during World War I, the collapse of the German and Austrian economies between the wars, and the rise of Hitler. Zweig was a pacifist. During World War I, he and his friends (most notably the French author Romain Rolland) met in neutral Swtizerland to publish a dissident journal which they hoped would transcend the government propaganda that labeled nationals of the opposing countries as "the enemy." Nonetheless, he recognized that the rise of the Nazis was something very different and had to be opposed. Zweig was a well-known and popular author before the Nazis banned his writings. His many books and plays were translated into 30 languages. Sadly he is almost unknown today. This book is a wonderful introduction to a man who must have adorned any group fortunate enough to have him as a participant.
Rating:
Summary: A sensitive and intelligent view of 20th century Europe
Review: This book puts you behind the observant eyes and inside the thoughtful mind of a man who lived very much in the world -- the world being that of Europe in the first half of the 20th century.. An Austrian Jew born in late 19-century Vienna, Stefan Zweig came of age in a city that was the capital of a centuries-old empire and one of the cultural centers of Europe. He died by his own hand 61 years later in exile from a Europe in the grip of Hitler's savagery. Through his astute and urbane eyes we see the optimism of pre-World War I Europe, the division of Europe into two hostile sides during World War I, the collapse of the German and Austrian economies between the wars, and the rise of Hitler. Zweig was a pacifist. During World War I, he and his friends (most notably the French author Romain Rolland) met in neutral Swtizerland to publish a dissident journal which they hoped would transcend the government propaganda that labeled nationals of the opposing countries as "the enemy." Nonetheless, he recognized that the rise of the Nazis was something very different and had to be opposed. Zweig was a well-known and popular author before the Nazis banned his writings. His many books and plays were translated into 30 languages. Sadly he is almost unknown today. This book is a wonderful introduction to a man who must have adorned any group fortunate enough to have him as a participant.
Rating:
Summary: One of the most moving books I ever read
Review: World of Yesterday is an unforgettable classic and it should be mandatory reading in high school. In this autobiography, Stefan Zweig not only tells his life story and how he became a successful writer in Vienna, but he also paints the most vivid picture of Europe in the beginning of the century, with heart-breaking detail of the consequences of World War 1 and Hitler's rise to power on his life and the life of all Europeans. What touched me the most is his suggestion of a free-thinking continent with symbolic borders and no passports, and his definition of peace. Reading this book reminded me of the meaninglessness of war. How one's friend and neighbor living across the river can become his "enemy" once war is declared. Its message is still 100% valid today. Just watch the world news...
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