Documents the spiritual crisis experienced by Russian author Leo Tolstoy in 1879, when at the age of fifty-one, and with two monumental works already published, he decided he had accomplished nothing of lasting value in his lifetime.
Hans Bernd Gisevius, who survived Hitler's retaliation after the failure of the Valkyrie conspiracy, discusses the anti-Hitler movement that began in 1933 and his recollections of the events and people involved in the planting of a bomb inside Adolf Hitler's headquarters, which exploded without killing Hitler.
Contains the title story in which the life of a peaceful public official is permanently changed by a mysterious illness, and includes "Family Happiness," "The Kreutzer Sonata," and "Master and Man," also by the ninteenth-century Russian author.
