Leo Tolstoy began War and Peace in 1862, the same year he married his bride, Sophia, and settled down on his estate, Yasnaya Polyana. He finished a first draft in 1863 and continued writing until 1869, when he started a major rewrite that took three more years to complete. He worked in a small room on a small circular table, writing in a thick, cramped hand incomprehensible to anyone except his wife, who dutifully transcribed his work every night. The novel, one of the most famous in world literature, concerns the lives of members of five families in Russia during the reign of Tsar Alexander when Napolean invaded Russia. Tolstoy did not regard it as a novel, per se, but as a work that encompassed philosophy and historical analysis. Its brilliance lies in Tolstoy’s ability to deal with the imminent as well as the transcendent with equal skill. As with creation itself, the scope can be as broad as the plains of Smolensk or as focused as the slight shiver that touches the upper lip of Bolkonsky’s wife when she is about to cry. The book can be likened to nourishment, in that, perhaps more than any other book extant, it offers the reader a diet of life itself, in all its many phases, hearts, faces and souls.  One should be no more put off by its length than one who stands in awe of the ocean’s depth or heaven’s height.  (Summary by Michael Hogan)