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: Minor Attempt to Put European History into Dull Romance
Review: At the end of ''War and Peace,'' Tolstoy portrays his heroine, Natasha, as a big, blowsy mother; she has given up bothering about clothes or appearance and devotes herself entirely to the welfare of her family. ''War and Peace'' seems to allow Natasha everything, to be one long celebration of her vitality and its triumph; but, no, it doesn't give her any life of her own. She must grow from lively girl to vigorous matron at the author's behest and not disturb his conception of what a good woman should be. Tolstoy was a mind numbing dullard, a massive misogynist who gave his best attempt at writing a novel about European history, the end of the 'aristocratic age' in the 19th century, he made it into one of the most boring stories ever conceived and on top of that it became one of the most over-rated. The early chapters are passive and inert, sometimes pathetic, even dull. The influence of V.G. Chertkov on Tolstoy can probably be explained by the fact that they belonged originally to the same world - the army and society, parties, wenching and card playing. Probably even more than Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy has been praised as being the greatest novelist in world literature which is a complete and utter defacement to forgotten Russian writers from which he plagerized his work such as Mikhail Saltykov, Mikhail Zoshchenko and Ivan Goncharov. Thus there was nothing wholly original in Tolstoy, he was outdated by the time he had reached the age of 30...I suggest reading Dostoyevsky instead, he is a fresh approach to the character of Russia.
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: Simply one of the best books ever written
Review: I first tried to read War and Peace in High School. A teacher, who had carried the book all through the Pacific campaign in WWII recommended it as a book that had changed his life. I tried three times and couldn't get past a few hundred pages because of the numerous characters - each with multiple names. The fourth time I stuck with it and was rewarded with a reading experience that has seldom been equaled. Since that time I have reread the book every two or three years, so I must have been through it 15 or more times, and each time I find things I haven't noticed before. This is such a grand book in terms of number of characters in all levels of Russian society, historical scope, period detail, philosophical implications, romance, drama, tragedy, action etc, etc, etc. There is just no way to enumerate all that is appealing about Tolstoy's masterpiece. The main characters are as humanly complex and interesting as real people. I feel that I know them like friends. The plot(s) are involving and get more tight and interconnected as the book progresses, so that there is a great satisfaction as various threads come together, and never with the jarring coincidences that propel a typical Dickins novel. If I had to pick only one novel that I would ever be able to read again, it would have to be War and Peace. There is so much of interest going on in this book that it would be hard to wear it out in a lifetime.
Rating:
Summary: Yes, the Greatest Novel Ever Written
Review: I have read a lot of books and so I've scrabbled together a fairly intelligent idea of what a great book is; the definition has always been complicated and hard to explain, but I really needn't have bothered. The concept can be summed up in only three words: "War and Peace".
This is, simply, what all novels want to be when they grow up. The novel format is as varied as the writers who attempt it---to call "War and Peace" and "Ulysses" examples of the same art form seems ridiculous, but it's true---but ultimately a novel is a story about humans that explains what humanity is, or might be, or could have been; through these characters whose adventures you're following, you might learn something about what it means to be a human being. Every art form is about this experience, but only the novel can really hunker down and explore humanity in all its billions of shapes. You can learn not only facts and feelings but you can learn TIME by spending it in these pages. You can learn GROWTH. You can learn LIFE.
The main characters in "War and Peace" are Pierre Bezuhov, Prince Andrey Bolkonsky, and Natasha Rostov, three Russians caught in the middle of the war between their country and France in the years 1805 to 1813. Through them we meet dozens if not hundreds more characters, and through those dozens or hundreds we simply meet humanity itself. There's no other way to express it. The way Tolstoy tells us about his characters shows us ourselves; the identification is that strong. When a character falls, in battle or from old age, we feel that someone we know personally is gone, and we mourn them as though we couldn't simply flip back a few pages and resurrect them. The mass of life in this book is overwhelming: the story, like the title, is so big it seems impossible that you could find a moment of intimacy, but in fact there are hours here, even days. There is so much contained in the book, battles and weddings, parties and firestorms, evacuations and reunions, military history and moral philosophy, yet Tolstoy never loses track of his characters and how they are evolving while they watch the world tear itself apart and try, almost pitifully, to put itself back together again. It's an absolutely superhuman performance, one no writer could have dared hope for. Only one writer in history ever did it, and no writer ever will again.
"War and Peace" gets its reputation not from dusty old college professors, but from the sheer power of its story and the awesome scope of its understanding, and its ability to impart that understanding to the reader in the guise of a riveting tale of adventure and romance. The novel survives not because it's A CLASSIC, but because it is impossible to pick it up and not be sucked into its hurricane of humanity.
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: 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: 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: 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: 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!
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