Before you is the second volume of the unique three-volume edition “Peoples and Personalities in History”, where for the first time in Russia an attempt was made to comprehend the development of world and domestic cultures as an inseparable process. This book tells about the life and work of writers, poets, philosophers, and politicians. The book presents figures who largely shaped the image of the European, the man of the West and the East: Byron, Hugo, Stendhal, Balzac, Goethe, Schiller, Heine, Durer, Goya, Delacroix, Renoir, Gauguin, Rolin, Mozart, Bach, Beethoven, Chopin, Wagner, Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche. The book is intended for a wide range of readers.