In his own lifetime, Stefan Zweig (1881-1942) was revered for the novel Beware of Pity and the memoir The World of Yesterday, but he enjoyed a separate career as a historian. In this collection of short biographies, Zwieg profiles composer G.F. Handel, who has just found inspiration for his masterpiece; Vasco Núñez de Balboa, on a quest to be the first European to see the Pacific Ocean; Cyrus W. Field, trying to lay the first trans-Atlantic telegraph cable; Captain Rouget, writing "La Marseillaise," the French national anthem; and Swiss visionary John Sutter, who founded a colony on the site of modern-day Sacramento.