War and Peace

by Leo Tolstoy

Recommended in 20 interviews and reading lists

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Who recommends it

1. Sophie RatcliffeInterview

   I’m a really a fast reader. If required, I can read three novels in a day. I once read both versions of War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy (a new variant manuscript was discovered about 15 years ago) in a period of four days. It can be useful but it leaves you feeling a bit sick, like eating too much cake.

2. L. David MarquetInterview

   War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy and Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen. Just too good not to relive.

3. Rags MoralesInterview

   Outside of fatherhood, nothing really. I keep thinking that’s up and coming. Reading wise, nothing like reading War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy in between layovers, if that’s what you mean.

4. Tamler SommersInterview

   I’ve read most of my favorite books at least three times. I’ve read Lolita and Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabakov five or six times each. I have a greater appreciation for books when I reread them. And my memory’s not great, so when I go back to something like War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy after 6 or 7 years, it’s almost…

5. Margaret HeffernanInterview

   Sorry to say this since it sounds so pretentious but War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy. I read it in my early 20s – I had a crush on a guy who taught Russian at Sandhurst \[the UK military academy\] and he introduced me to it. Now I read the book roughly every 5 years. Each time it is a different book and helps me see…

6. Helen StewardInterview

   Oh real, real – every time. I’m a total dinosaur. The only time I’ve ever resorted to my Kindle was to read War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy which was too heavy to hold up comfortably in bed! As I just said, I’ve got a bad memory and I often have to flick back through books to remind myself of things that happened…

7. Greg McKeownInterview
8. Nicole GallandInterview

   War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy, One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, If On A Winter’s Night A Traveler by Italo Calvino, Anguished English by Richard Lederer, The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood, The Orphan Master’s Son by Adam Johnson, The Collected Plays of Samuel Beckett, The Idiot by Fyodor…

9. Naomi DuguidInterview

   I love the nineteenth century novels from France and Russia, again the classics known to all, such as Madame Bovary and A Simple Heart by Gustave Flaubert, The Brothers Karamazov and Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy. I’d also like to mention Barchester Towers by Anthony…

10. Angie HobbsInterview

    I am currently reading War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy, which is simply magnificent: his psychological insight and sympathy are extraordinary, as is his ability to create an entirely believable world.

11. Andrew KnollInterview

    War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy, One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Doctor Faustus by Thomas Mann (the best writing about music I know), The True History of the Kelly Gang by Peter Carey,

12. Laura VanderkamInterview

    Short answer: yes. Longer answer: I read quite a bit (I log my time, and know I clocked 327 hours between April 2015 and April 2016!) but a lot of it is fashion and gossip magazine stories. To be sure, some of the magazines I read are pretty meaty (the Economist) but others (Us Weekly) not so much. I have a lot of…

13. Tim AtkinInterview

    I have very catholic tastes, so lots of things lined up. Starting with Keeping on Keeping On by Alan Bennett and a book about the famous Czech runner, Today We Die a Little by Richard Askwith. One of these days, it’s also time I got around to reading three of greatest novels ever written (or so I’m told): Ulysses by…

14. Mark MansonInterview

    War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy. It’s my favorite book of all time. I know that sounds cheesy and like I’m trying to impress my high school teacher, but it’s true.

15. Joseph MazurInterview

    By law? Wow! That’s extreme. I hope we don’t make laws about what to read or not read. When I was in grade school in New York City every student in the city was required to read particular books. Growth of the Soil by Knut Hamson. I hated that book, but loved Hunger, another book by Knut Hamson. If the question were…

16. Fiona HumberstoneInterview

    Cookbooks! I have three children so I tend to work full pelt (on an extremely part time basis) for six weeks and then relax in the school holidays. That’s when I’ll be reading that brand new copy of War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy I oh so optimistically purchased after the BBC adaptation in January.

17. Elise QuevedoInterview

    War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy; to this date it is still regarded as one of the central works of world literature.

18. Taisu ZhangInterview

    “Everyone would benefit” is a very high standard. It’s hard to think of a book that truly meets that standard… War and Peace, maybe?

19. Michael MichalkoInterview

    Russian author Leo Tolstoy author of War and Peace, Anna Karenina and The Death of Ivan Ilyic.

20. Luciano FloridiInterview

    Too may… but I would like to mention some books that everybody talks about but few actually read: Moby Dick by Herman Melville and Don Quixote by Miguel De Cervantes, both totally fascinating and in some pages also terribly boring. War and Peace and Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy, to be read in a single year, without…

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