She also tried to connect theories of Cubism to literature, as in the essay COMPOSITION AS EXPLANATION (1926), which was based on her lectures at Cambridge and Oxford. After differences emerged between the Cubists and the post-Impressionists, Stein sided with the former while her brother Leo championed the latter. In her book about Picasso (1938) Stein recalled that in 1909 the artist showed her some photographs of a Spanish village to demonstrate how Cubist in reality they appeared. According to Stein, Picasso's paintings, such as 'Horta de Ebro' and 'Maison sur la colline' were almost exactly like the photographs. Her modernist literary style Stein lauched with THE MAKING OF AMERICANS, written between 1906 and 1908 but not published until 1925. Stein tried to translate in it Cubist paintings into a prose form and present an object or an experience from every angle simultaneously. The effect was reinforced by minimal use of punctuation. In the course of the book's 925 pages Stein's family history became a history of whole humanity. In 1914 Stein published the poetry collection TENDER BUTTONS. It presented a series of still lives, such as 'A Chair', 'A Box', 'Roastbeef', and 'End of Summer'. Each of these is characterized by unexpected phrases that collide. When England declared war on Germany, Stein was visiting the philosopher Alfred North Whitehead in England, with her lover Toklas. After a brief trip to Majorca in 1915 they returned to Paris, joining the American Fund For French Wounded. She and Toklas received the French government's Medaille de la Reconnaissance Française in 1922. "America is my country and Paris is my home town and it is as it has come to be. After all anybody is as their land and air is. Anybody is as the sky is low or high, the air heavy or clean and anybody is as there is wind or no wind there. It is that which makes them and the arts they make and the work they do and the way they eat and the way they drink and the way they learn and everything" (from 'An American and France,' 1936)
In 1934 Stein travelled to New York. Her opera, FOUR SAINTS IN THREE ACTS, music composed by Virgil Thomson, had become A huge success with an all-black cast. She toured America and returned to France next year. Toklas and Stein were both Jews, but they remained in France during World War II, living under the protection of Pétain in various country houses. In December 1944 they returned to Paris. Stein's war memoirs, WARS I HAVE SEEN, appeared in 1945. Stein's best known work, THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ALICE B. TOKLAS, is actually her own autobiography. The last years of her live Stein suffered from cancer.