MikePeterS’s Reviews > War and Peace > Status Update

Tolstoy is out here dropping one of the craziest refutations of traditional models of history like it’s nobody’s business.

Woof…

Tolstoy loves to model the flow of history as a physicist models the motion of a mechanical system. He recognizes how the change in momentum of a system (a battle, an election, an empire) cannot be due to one force alone (i.e. “great” men like Napoleon or Emperor Alexander I), but by the total sum of minute forces acting on the system (the individual wills of soldiers, officials, and everyone involved). COOL!

Pierre has come a long way…

I love how Tolstoy really goes out of his way to convince us that Napoleon was not the military genius that traditional history proposes. Just absolutely undercutting any sense of control that Napoleon and his aid-de-camps believed he had. IT’S FUNNY!