1. Introduction -- A Pivotal Struggle -- Interpretations of the Battle -- Revolutionary Army -- Stalin's City -- Prewar Era -- Army and Party in War -- Commanders and Commissars -- Politics, Up Close -- The Hero Strategy -- Good and Bad Soldiers -- Forms of Combat -- People in War -- Historians of the Avant-Garde -- The Commission in Stalingrad -- The Transcripts -- Sources and Editorial Principles -- 2. A Chorus of Soldiers -- The Fate of the City and Its Residents -- Agrafena Pozdnyakova -- Gurtyev's Rifle Division in Battle -- Vasily Grossman's "In the Line of the Main Drive" -- The Landing at Latoshinka -- The Capture of Field Marshal Paulus -- 3. Nine Accounts of the War -- General Vasily Chuikov -- Guards Division General Alexander Rodimzev -- Nurse Vera Gurova -- A Lieutenant from Odessa : Alexander Averbuch -- Regiment Commander Alexander Gerasimov -- The History Instructor : Captain Nikolai Aksyonov -- Sniper Vasily Zaytsev -- A Simple Soldier : Alexander Parchomenko -- Captain Pyotr Sayonchkovsky -- 4. The Germans Speak -- German Prisoners in February 1943 -- A German Diary from the Kessel -- 5. War and Peace -- Maps.