About: War and Peace by Leo Tol­stoy is a fic­tional book first pub­lished in 1869. The work is regarded as one of the most impor­tant works of world lit­er­a­ture. The copy I read was trans­lated by Louise and Aylmer Maude. 1350 pages Pub­lisher: Oxford Uni­ver­sity Press, USA; New edition ISBN: 0199232768 My rating for War & Peace – 5 Great price on this book in paper or elec­tronic format More books by Leo Tolstoy Thoughts: It took me a while to read War & Peace by Leo Tolstoy, not only for the obvious reason (1,024 pages) but also because I read it in spurts, between reading other books. If you didn’t read War & Peace you should, not only is it full with studies of the human condition, but also full of wisdom which is still relevant to this day. I felt that I learned a lot from reading this book, not only about history, but also about culture and human intelligence. It’s too bad that if Tolstoy would have lived today, War & Peace wouldn’t even have been published. It’s not popular, too long and too tiresome – they would say. But this is real literature, with validity and…

War and Peace by Leo Tol­stoy is a fic­tional book first pub­lished in 1869. The work is regarded as one of the most impor­tant works of world lit­er­a­ture. The copy I read was trans­lated by Louise and Aylmer Maude.

Natasha is mourning Andrei, yet she is unaware that Petya has died as well. Natasha replays in her mind her last conversations with Andrei and to consider whether or not they had understood one another when news of Petya’s death come.

Tolstoy lays off the aristocracy in this part and concentrates more on the “war” part of the novel. In the novel, is in real life, the lines between good and bad are very murky and usually depends on which line you’re standing on.

Tolstoy does not understand how historians refer to Napoleon as “great” as he does not live up to the standards of humanity and goodness, neither as a military commander, emperor, leader or even in exile. As a conqueror / enemy / ally Napoleon constantly mislead the Russians and destroyed their economy. When he gives the order for the French to retreat, Napoleon already made sure he’s the first one to withdraw.

Once more Tolstoy shows his disdain for Russia’s upper class. Even with the invasion going on, the capital battered and people suffering Russia’s elite society still lives as if their gatherings are of utmost importance.

The French army is hurt, moving out of Borodino, it advances towards Mosco. Kutuzov, realizing that the French momentum cannot be stopped, gives up Moscow without a fight or sacrificing lives to defend it. This move is very unpopular and meets with general disapproval of the populace. The “haves” evacuate Moscow.

The French troops are marching intoRussia and the two Russian leaders, Prince Bagration and the German Barclay de Tolly, represent two conflicting and opposing forces within the Russian army. Prince Bagration has the advantage since the Russians don’t like the Germans too much.

The novel starts off with a section in which Tolstoy writes his thoughts about the nature of historic action. At first this annoyed me (as I continued reading I discovered that this was not unique to this section) because it seems to bring the story to a grinding halt. At firs this type of meditations annoyed me, but the more I read the more I realized that Tolstoy was keeping to the theme of War & Peace, the human condition. Only instead of pontificating on the subject of human condition while telling the story of a bunch of disgusting and somewhat less disgusting people, Tolstoy turns the table on the readers and discusses the subject on a much bigger scale.

Pierre is getting depressed more and more with the challenges life throws at him especially when he realizes that Freemasonry is not giving him a new meaning. He realizes that he doesn’t like the person he is becoming and tries to tell himself that this is not the case, he is not becoming “that” person. However, the questions still torture Pierre.