This anthology is the product of many years of intensive research and collecting on the part of the editor. Each letter is prefaced with a biographical prelude and a summary of the historic background behind the correspondence. Among the over 120 letters herein, read as Alexander the Great announces to Darius, King of Persia, that he alone has dominion over the earth; Beethoven writes to his Immortal Beloved; Michelangelo negotiates with the Pope over the Sistine Chapel; Christopher Columbus reports his first impressions of America to the Court of Spain; Dostoyevsky describes his sensations in the minutes before he was to be executed; Thomas Mann writing in 1937 hurls his defiance against Hitler and the Nazi regime. Here then are love letters, taunting letters, shocking letters, letters dipped in honeyed phrases, letters written with words of gall, bombastic letters, letters breathing fire, letters with good news, letters that spelled disaster, passionate letters, secret letters, casual letters, gushing letters, impulsive letters, grandiloquent letters, crafty letters, short letters, voluminous letters, letters of courage, letters of hatred, letters of adoration, letters of fury, letters that people forgot to burn, letters that people did not dare to send, letters that glorified literature, thundering letters, tender letters, inspired letters, diabolical letters, letters that made history.