War and Peace
by
Leo Tolstoy
Good Books rating 4.57
Technical:
- ID: 33
- Added: 2025-08-10
- Updated: 2025-09-02
- ISBN: 9780393966473
- Publisher: W W Norton & Company Incorporated
- Published: 1996-01-01
- Reviews: 3
"Backgrounds and Sources" includes the publication history of War and Peace, selections from Tolstoy's letters and diaries as well as three drafts of his introduction to the novel that elucidate the its evolution, and an 1868 article by Tolstoy in which he reacts to his critics. "Criticism" includes twenty essays, seven of them new, that provide diverse perspectives on the novel by Nikolai Strakhov, V. I. Lenin, Henry James, Isaiah Berlin, D. S. Mirsky, Kathryn Feuer, Lydia Ginzburg, Richard Gustafson, Gary Saul Morson, and Caryl Emerson, among others. A Chronology and Selected Bibliography are also included.
Reviews
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- The classic to end all classics
- an epic of monumental scale regarded as one of the most important works of literature
- hurtling Tolstoy to literary greatness
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- War and Peace is breathtaking
- the transformation of Pierre, surely the archetype of the anti-hero in every sense, is amusing, ridiculous, touching, tragic
- a profound exploration of human complexity
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- Even though the last 30% was a struggle especially compared to the rest of the book
- I would recommend War and Peace, not just for the reading experience but for its rich character development
- a timeless and universal appeal