This volume introduces the reader to the great confessions of great thinkers - Saint Augustine (354-430), a Berber born in North Africa, one of the most influential theologians in the history of Christianity, Peter Abelard (1079-1142), a brilliant philosopher who was persecuted through his whole life, Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778), an outstanding thinker, sociologist and creator of new political theories, and Leo (Lev Nikolayevich) Tolstoy (1828-1910), one of the most influential writers and moral authorities of the XIXth century. All those men left us profound and controversial accounts of their lives - intellectual, social and personal.