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War and Peace

Leo Tolstoy

Start date: April 1, 2024

Finish date: June 30, 2024

Why we're reading this: Long Read Classic 2nd Quarter 2024

Long Read Classic Group Read, 1st & 2nd quarter, 2014
[close] Long Read Classic 2nd Quarter 2024

Long Read Classic Group Read, 1st & 2nd quarter, 2014

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Dec 27, 2017 Richard Subber rated it liked it

Perhaps you know that Tolstoy appended two epilogues to War and Peace.
In the Second Epilogue, Tolstoy’s sometimes discursive style may impede the modern reader. It’s not boring, but it seems to be repetitious, and Tolstoy uses surprisingly mundane examples that may seem irrelevant to the modern reader.
It’s a Russian version of mid-19th century style. It seems to be relentlessly organized, using what Tolstoy presumably believed was an elaborate precision of language that tends to obscure and conf Perhaps you know that Tolstoy appended two epilogues to War and Peace.
In the Second Epilogue, Tolstoy’s sometimes discursive style may impede the modern reader. It’s not boring, but it seems to be repetitious, and Tolstoy uses surprisingly mundane examples that may seem irrelevant to the modern reader.
It’s a Russian version of mid-19th century style. It seems to be relentlessly organized, using what Tolstoy presumably believed was an elaborate precision of language that tends to obscure and confuse his observations and conclusions.
I respect his ruminations about the nature and causes of history, the inevitability of historical events, and the possibly countervailing potency of human free will.
I confess that I am essentially unmoved by his conclusion that freedom of will and action is not a prime mover in human enterprise and human history.
I suspect that Tolstoy’s endorsement of “dependence on the external world, on time, and on cause,” and his acknowledgement of so-called “laws” that frame human history, is a manifestly inadequate description of the reality and the process of human history.
I suggest that Tolstoy went astray in his search for “cause” in human history.
There are, to be sure, forms and trends and ex post recognition of patterns in history. The longues durées exist, but they are only part of the story. There are recognizable, durable attributes of human nature. They are only part of the story.
Tolstoy almost forgets to mention the utterly contingent natures of historical reality, the historical process, human action, and the sequence of past events. One essential element of history is the continuous interaction of innumerable competing and complementary human behaviors and environmental circumstances.
History is the unpredictable single chain of events that actually happened, with many or most of their contingent antecedents forever unknown. There’s no way to write a neat and complete version of it.
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Apr 06, 2014 Sandy rated it liked it

This is actually 3.5 stars. As a whole the book was surprisingly readable, but long, very, very ,very long. I did get bogged down in the war scenes and at times came of a bit preachy.

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Jun 02, 2020 Jason marked it as abandoned

Shelves: public-domain, bbc-100-classics, pbs-s-the-great-american-read

Very large periods of time separate the pickups of this book for me. I just can't stay interested in the story. It's just not my thing and I'm going to let it go. ...more

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