The World of Yesterday: Memoires of a European (German title Die Welt von Gestern: Erinnerungen eines Europäers) is the memoir of Austrian writer Stefan Zweig. It has been called the most famous book on the Habsburg Empire. He started writing it in 1934 when, anticipating Anschluss and Nazi persecution, he uprooted himself from Austria to England and later to Brazil. He posted the manuscript, typed by his second wife Lotte Altmann, to the publisher the day before Zweig and Altmann both committed suicide in February 1942.

The book was first published in the original German language by an anti-Nazi Exilliteratur (exile literature) publishing firm based in Stockholm (1942), as Die Welt von Gestern. It was first published in English in April 1943 by Viking Press. In 2011, Plunkett Lake Press reissued it in eBook form. In 2013, the University of Nebraska Press published a translation by the noted British translator Anthea Bell.

The book describes life in Vienna at the start of the 20th century with detailed anecdotes. It depicts the dying days of Austria-Hungary under the emperors Franz Joseph I of Austria (reigned 1848–1916) and Karl I of Austria (reigned 1916–1918), including the country's literature, the arts, the system of education, and the sexual ethics prevalent at the time, the same that provided the backdrop to the emergence of psychoanalysis. Zweig also describes the stability of Viennese society after centuries of Habsburg rule.

Zweig sets out to write his autobiography following the terrible events and upheavals experienced by his generation. He feels the need to bear witness to the next generation of what his age has gone through. He realizes that his past is "out of reach." Zweig makes it clear that his biography is based entirely on his memories. He looks back on his youth in pre-war Austrian society, focusing primarily on Vienna, calling that time the "Golden Age of Security," where stable politics and economy meant everyone could see themselves comfortably into the future. His family represents the cosmopolitan "good Jewish bourgeoisie," which had primarily become a patron of Viennese culture. Vienna had become the city of culture, and Zweig states all Viennese had desirable tastes. The artists, especially the theatre actors, were Austria's significant famous figures.

In school, Zweig criticizes the old way of impersonal, cold, and distant teaching. He claims that the school's purpose was to discipline and calm the youth's ardor, and that there was a certain distrust of young people in society. In the face of this pressure, the students harbored a deep hatred toward authority but became entranced by the abundance of art in Vienna. Rainer Maria Rilke and Hugo von Hofmannsthal, young writers, become symbols of a whole movement of the younger generation of artists. Zweig also criticizes the suppression of discourse around sexual impulses leading to the ubiquity of prostitution, venereal disease, and constriction both in clothing and behavior between sexes, though notes that by his writing in the late 1930s the situation had dramatically improved for both women and men, and the generation after him was much more fortunate. Also during his youth, the first mass movements affected Austria, starting with the socialist movement, then the Christian Democratic Movement, and finally, the German Reich's unification movement. In addition, the anti-Semitic trend began to gain momentum, although it was still relatively moderate in its early stages, and he experienced relatively little bigotry personally.

Zweig studies philosophy at college to give himself as much time as possible to write, collect his poems, and discover other things. At nineteen, he is published in Neue Freie Presse, where he meets editor Theodor Herzl for whom he nourished a deep admiration, and afterwards begins to travel the world. He goes to Berlin, a city that attracted new talent, to escape his young celebrity and meet people beyond the circle of the Jewish bourgeoisie in Vienna. Zweig meets poet Peter Hille and anthroposophy's founder Rudolf Steiner, and translates poems and literary texts into his mother tongue to perfect his German. He meets with Émile Verhaeren while visiting the studio of Charles van der Stappen, and after finishing his studies leaves for Paris. He becomes close with Léon Bazalgette and Rainer Maria Rilke. Zweig also meets with Auguste Rodin, who gives him a tour of his studio and his last still unfinished creation before beginning to retouch his creation, and ends up forgetting Zweig's presence altogether. Leaving for London after an indicident with his stolen suitcase and to improve his spoken English, he attends a private reading of poems by William Butler Yeats.

While abroad, the only valuables he carries with him are autographs and other writings from authors he admires, notably Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. He boasts of having been able to meet Goethe's niece, on whom Goethe's gaze has lovingly rested. With Insel Verlag Publishing House, he published his first dramas, notably Thersites, based on the character of the same name in Homer's Iliad. Zweig then recounts that four times, the performances that could have quickly propelled him to glory were stopped by the star actor or director's death. Zweig initially thought he was being chased by fate, but he recognizes afterward that very often, chance takes on the appearance of destiny. This brings him back to his first vocation, that of a writer. Continuing to travel, he meets Walther Rathenau, whom he deeply admires. While in India, he criticizes the caste system as discrimitory and unjust. There, he meets Karl Haushofer, whom he regards with high esteem during his journey, although he is later saddened by the adoption of his ideas by the Nazi regime. Zweig then travels to the United States, which left him with a powerful impression. He is pleased to see how easy it is for any individual to find work and make a living without asking for his origin, papers, or anything else.

Zweig contemplates that it must now be difficult for the generation after him to live through crises and catastrophes and still maintain optimism, but his generation witnessed a rapid improvement in living conditions, a series of discoveries and innovations, and the liberation of youth. Optimism itself thwarted any attempt to seek peace between nations—each believing that the other side valued peace more than anything else, and that social progress was inevitable. He describes the Redl affair represents the first event in which tensions were palpable. When he visits the cinema in Tours, he was amazed to see that the hatred displayed against Kaiser Wilhelm II had already spread throughout France.