Book excerpt: Fifty years ago, Stefan Zweig, who committed suicide in 1942, was the most widely read and translated living writer in the world. Zweig's Vienna was a world of bright, brittle superficialities, in which the bourgeoisie "gradually elevated the eternal business of seeing and being seen to the purpose of the existence." To break through the facades of this society, Zweig developed a remarkable literary and psychological method. In The World of Yesterday's Humanist Today, thirty scholars of history, literature, and music share their studies of Zweig and their insight into his works.