War and Peace is considered one of the world’s greatest works of fiction. It is regarded, along with Anna Karenina, as Tolstoy’s finest literary achievement. Epic in scale, War and Peace delineates in graphic detail events leading up to Napoleon’s invasion of Russia, and the impact of the Napoleonic era on Tsarist society, as seen through the eyes of five Russian aristocratic families.
I need my top five books. This is unforgettable and definitely worth the time it takes to read it. I found it easy to read and not as daunting as one would expect.
A great classic.
If you have not read it you cannot pretend to be an educated person.
Wonderful re read. Took me out of funk over pollical reality, news obsessions.
You enter a rich world of families, armies, historical movements, silliness, tragedy, For a year I haven’t read fiction, too obsessed with the news which is stranger than fiction right now. Only this novel pulled me back into a world that existed over a century ago. Look forward to re reading Anna Karenina.
Tolstoy, like Shakespeare, does it all. Characters of every class are portrayed with intrinsic depth and compassion. Romance, politics, social custom, economic life, all the details of war and peace are rendered as large and faithful as life itself.
A friendvtolfriendvtold m about it
His finest work. Do not fear it’s length!
One of the all time great novels and a personal favorite. I am astounded by the character development that takes place without bombast. This is a triumph of substance over style.
What else are you doing right now-a great read if you take the time to keep the characters straight-Anna Karenina also fantastic(I like it above War and Peace-) as is Criime and Punishment (Dostoyevski)If you read these things in high school and college-go back and revisit them-I had completely changed ideas about each of these books-Especially Anna Karenina
I thought I should read it, since I was in a war at the time–but I can remember very little of it. Held my attention just enough to plow to the end.
Tolstoy changed the way I see the world.
This is my all time favorite book! I have read it three times and learn more each time. I am ready to read it again!
Extremely pedagogical
Yes, I actually read the whole book one summer a few years ago. 50 pages a day. It’s kind of like one long, long season of a Netflix show….
I enjoyed this book
It is not an easy read but well worth the effort
A lot of classics fail to wow readers like they did when they were first released, but War and Peace, in my opinion, decidedly does not fall into that category (with the exception of a tedious proto-historiographical treatise shoehorned in toward the end). Tolstoy’s work is densely plotted, and his characters are richly drawn; they live on the page from the first sentences they’re mentioned. To be able to sustain that across such an expansive story is an admirable feat and makes for a beautiful, delightfully immersive journey through joy, romance, shame, and tragedy.
I also enjoyed Tolstoy’s insistence on showing the brutal, ugly senselessness of war, as well as on contending with the strong-man or top-down view of history (even though I just complained about his historiographical arguments; it was more about how many pages he spent on it). It may just be my ignorance of Russian literature, but I found his treatment of the battle sequences to be fairly surprising for the era in which he was writing.
Although longer than necessary, the story and characters are fascinating as well as the time period. Highly recommend
Hard reading worth it
One of the best books I read…I was is school when I read this book and revisited many many years later and I still think it is one of the best I ever read! A classic!
hard to read book very long great story. too many characters, each with more than one name. I had to keep going back to figure out which person he was referring to
finally made a list of characters and all their many names that I used as a cheat sheet. took me along time to read it, but it was worth it.