Rating: 
Summary: A Life Changing Experience!!!
Review: I first read War and Peace with Anna Karenina during a course in the fall of 2002. I had always aspired to read Karenina but not necessarily War and Peace. I was very much surprised. War and Peace is a cultural gem, not necessariy a novel but an exprerience.What I liked about War and Peace was Tolstoy's incredible means of developing his characters. In essence, we see his characters as adolescents and twenty-somethings develop into middle-aged people who have gone through child-rearing and career development. The key figures to watch are Pierre Bezukhov and Prince Andrei as they seek out the quest for fulfillment. We see them as young people trying to figure out questions of religion and love interests. We see them lose people they love, get divorced and do the wrong things sometimes. We read their letters, diaries, find out their secrets, and watch them fight out duels. We experience the characters becoming parents, nursing their babies, and fighting petty arguments. Tolstoy wrote this work during a happy time in his life, and this is especially evident through his portrayal of Pierre and Natasha. The other characters are memorable -- through Tolstoy's vivid use of visual imagery -- Helene's white shoulders, Princess Mary's heavy walk, etc. etc. The cities are characterized -- Moscow is good Russia, St. Petersburg has been corrupted by too many European influences. The Rostovs are admirable Russians whereas the Kuragins tend towards corruption. The historial tracts and the portrayals of the historical characters are interesting -- I can't say enough things about this work. It was life-changing, and it inspired me more than any other book that I have ever read. Try to get this Maude translation -- it is the best one and it has wonderful explanations and background information!
Rating:
Summary: A True Classic
Review: What I am about to review is not Tolstoy's actual book but an adaptation of his book by British playwright Helen Edmundson. And what an adaptation it is. As many people know, Tolstoy's War and Peace is a thousand something pages long. Well, Helen Edmundson has taken all the action of this huge paperweight of a novel and compressed it into a 4.5 hour play. And when I mean compressed, I mean she has managed to get everything into the play including a subplot about how Pierre takes up freemasonry, which is absent from Sergei Bondarchuk's 7-hour film adaptation. She wasn't able to dramatize Denisov unfortunately but she managed to make a reference. Compressing an entire book, especially a book of such immense length, is no easy feat. If you try to adapt a novel that is of considerable length, good luck. Most adaptations are so long that an audience is given an option to leave after the first part is over and come back the next day. Examples of this are the 8 1/2 hour "Nicholas Nickleby", the six hour "The Cider House Rules" London's recent six hour West End hit, "His Dark Materials", and of course, Peter Brook's nine hour long adaptation of "The Mahabharata" which has been cut down to less than 5 1/2 hours in a film version. It's also very interesting how Edmundson chooses to have Pierre and Napoleon engage in imaginary conversation. It's quite a fascinating device. I have read the actual book (which I loved), seen the opera (which I also loved even though it starts somewhere in the middle of the book. Actually, if you ever see the opera, read the book first. The opera starts 500 pages later.), seen the film (which I also also loved) and now I have this play which I bought in New York and read on the train ride home. Helen Edmundson has achieved an amazing feat. I salute her.
Rating:
Summary: A Beautiful Book About Life, and one of my very favourites.
Review: This major work by Leo Tolstoy is totally wonderful. It is a panorama of Russian life during the Napoleonic era. It tells a very comprehensive story about Napoleon's invasion into Russia, and the disastrous effects of that. It shows the strength and character of the Russian people during this very terrible part of their history. This is an extremely long and complex story, but one that should be read nonetheless. Such a long and detailed story leaves the reader changed after he or she has read it. It is such a beautiful story, and it left me with a sense of wonder at the changes that humanity has encountered over the centuries and it clearly pointed out the size and the complexity of life itself. I have read this book only once so far, but I can still clearly remember the beauty and the scope of this great novel. I would like to read it again once more sometime just to refresh my memory. It's probably one of the longest books that you'll find, and the Russian names can be a bit confusing to an English-speaking person, but it is so worth the effort!
Rating: 
Summary: War and Peace...okay....
Review: I quite liked this read. It holds a high place for me in contemporary fiction; but I didn't understand a lot of things. First of all, the constant descriptions of the robots are very inaccurate as there were no such things existing in Cold War Russia. Secondly, I found the presence of spaceships to be a bit far-fetched; also, "communism" in Russia? Please, please, please. This Leo Tolstoy guy gets all his perks from writing about scantily clad Russian robots and coca-cola. I didn't understand the relationship between a lot of characters either; robots do not feel love. And penguins don't actually fly. You have to remember that War and Peace set a certain standard for androidal fiction - from Goosebumps to Carl Segan - but I didn't enjoy it myself.
Rating:
Summary: A Masterpiece Not to Be Missed!
Review: Astounding. Never have so many pages turned so quickly in a masterfully executed novel that is at once expansive and acutely karmic. Tolstoy succeeds in capturing life's challenges, triumphs, and losses so poetically one cannot help but put down the novel occasionally and sigh. A magnificent gem whose sheer size of over a million words may dissuade many readers--just be sure you're not one of them, for this shinning literary chalice is the work from which all other writers, save Shakespeare, drink.
Rating:
Summary: Don't be afraid.....
Review: I've wanted to read this book for a long time, but was afaid of its size and my lack of knowledge of things Russian. After 20 pages, I was hooked. I've found it much more readable then I had assumed. I love Tolstoy's writing style, his attention to every day detail, his insights into his characters- each and every one fully drawn, no mater how minor a character. So, don't be afraid- you'll miss out on a great book!
Rating:
Summary: The greatest novel as yet written?
Review: I will just say a few words about why this book when I read it for the first time many years ago so moved me, and why I still today feel it is the greatest of all 'novels' From the opening scene at the soiree of Anna Pavlovna Tolstoy creates a world, a world of immense vitality and scope. He creates a tremendous panorama of characters, and seems to depict the life of a whole society. He in doing this creates a moral and philosophical drama in which tremendously appealing and individualized characters meet and influence each other. He too does this in such a way as to seem to center on the fundamental questions of life, of family of society. He tells too a number of love stories and the story of a heroic struggle in war in a way which seem to ennoble life.
And I think that this is the feeling that the book so strongly conveyed to me when I was a young person i.e. that life real life is something larger than I had ever known. And that to live truly live was something vastly greater than I myself had yet imagined. This book made me feel a deep love for life, life more mysterious life greater and more wonderful than what I had touched or tasted.
There is so so much to be said about this book. Not one page or a hundred pages are enough to talk about Pierre and Andre and Natasha and Old Bolkonsky and Mary and Nicholas. There are scenes of such power here ( Prince Andree's death scene under the stars , or the turning moment of the great battle when the patient wise Kutuzov understands how it is the land and the distance and the winter and the waiting which will defeat the French invasion, or Pierre's wandering realization as soldier through the battle and his coming to realization of where his true life is) . I cannot even in small summary touch upon the meanings and themes of this great work, including the philosophical discussion of free will, and Tolstoy's own sense that the higher up one is in the world of power paradoxically the less free one is.
I will just say that anyone who has the patience and the will to read through this work will come out of it with a greatly enhanced sense of the greatness of human life, and life's possibilities.
Rating:
Summary: Recognizing war
Review: It's catharticism that probably prompted Tolstoy to write his "War and Peace." We know that because both are included in his title, and no doubt he struggled with what mankind has always struggled with: the decision of when war is justifiable and when it is not. To do that, he chose to recount the tale of five families and the effects of war upon them to allow the reader to decide what is justifiable. In reading the accounts, undoubtedly, the insight of most is that in crossing the peace line, it's difficult to go back. Much like moving away from home, it is difficult to go back, and we are stuck with the realities we create. If no other purpose for the book is ever found, the ability to recognize the difference between war and peace should be enough to examine the principles upon which both stand, and the extent to which one can, or must go, to validate the justification of where one stands upon the issue. That same justification may be found within the Bible where the same choices must be examined, defined, and evaluated, usually without the benefit of any specific anticipated benefit. Instinct is usually all people have to go by, but perhaps instinct is enough to make that choice. In reading the Bible most would think that mankind has no choice, and that whether defending family or property, war is the ideal method. Yet, the moral of both Tolstoy's book and the Bible is that mankind has a choice not to succumb to war that twists him inside out from the model of human being he might have chosen to be, proving once again, that for every man there is a price he is willing to pay to alter his behavior. Determining that price, however, is an individual moral choice, and whether the decision is to fight, or to stand by and watch others fight may be one and the same thing, since, in either case, peace is on the flip side of war where it belongs.
Rating:
Summary: Great in Spite of Itself
Review: While I consider this book a great work of literature, I understand why some readers dislike it. It is posh and elitist, set for the most part within the circles of the upper flakes of the Russian upper crust. It says little about commoners or the underclass, and what little it does say is shot through with a patronizing condescension that often shades over into caricature. In this regard, it reminds one of "Gone With The Wind", another book that recalls the past through a haze of selectively sanitized nostalgia. The difference, I think, is that "Gone With The Wind" focused on little more than the loves and lives of its characters. This turned it into nothing but well written soap opera. "War and Peace", on the other hand, speaks to a larger purpose. It tries to give us a sense of an ancient and honourable culture suffering through invasion and tottering at the edge of ruin. It is saved from triviality by its attempt to transcend the lives of its characters, an attempt at which it largely succeeds.
It is a long book, much of it given over to digression, polemic and minutiae. Judged by modern writing conventions, it is too wordy, too literal and lacking subtlety. Contrary to the tenets of "good" writing, Tolstoy does not show; he tells. There is nothing of the oblique, the restrained or the quiet voice in his style. One suspects that a modern genius would write the same novel in a little over one third the length.
But this book was written over a century ago in an age of simpler conventions. Their novels were the equivalent of our epic movies, with the same grand gestures, elaborate costumes and cast of thousands. One must be prepared to read the book in the context of its time and place, failing which the author's labours look staged and artificial. Who knows? Future generations may look upon our epic films in much the same way, seeing them as creatures captive to our times. But this would not strip these films of their greatness.
This book requires not just an investment of time, but of patience. Impatience will destroy the experience more quickly than cheap cynicism. Tolstoy confounds us with such a tangle of characters, settings, plot lines and conflicts that at times one must chart out the profusion of interdependencies. Such thickets tie us up in brambles and roots. Sometimes, we are so bewildered by this underbrush that we forget to cast our eye upward to the forested cathedral above.
And this is why this book is ultimately still worth reading. Despite its faults, it manages to attain greatness. It goes beyond the confines of singular lives to explore universal themes. It touches both the small and the large. It invests its characters with depth and strength of purpose, and it doesn't shrink from giving them human failings.
I don't recommend this book for everyone. Frankly, those who look upon its length with a jaundiced eye are justified in their suspicion. It is not an easy read and demands more concentration than is dictated either by necessity or by good taste. However, it is a worthy read if you are curious about the Napoleonic invasion of Russia, the lives of the Russian nobility or just what the fuss is all about. And ultimately, there is more than enough substance to reward the determined reader.
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