Journey Into the Past by Stefan Zweig

In his memoir, The World of Yesterday, published the year after his suicide in 1942 at age 60, Stefan Zweig wistfully recalls the sense of security that “made life seem worthwhile” and that defined his parents’ and grandparents’ generation. Pre-WWI Europe, it seemed, was on an inexorably upward journey away from barbarism, whereas what came after proved to Zweig that his fellow Viennese Jew, Sigmund Freud, was right all along: civilization is “merely a thin layer liable at any moment to be pierced by the destructive forces of the underworld.” Read the rest @ Words Without Borders.