War and Peace—Leo Tolstoy

Back from the wars

War and Peace is not a novel. I'm not sure just what it is, but it is a magnificent opus: grand in scope, brilliant in execution, and overwhelming. Reading it, I felt as one studying the interior of a rococo basilica: every square inch a work of art, yet all of it conceived as a single thing, cumulatively functioning as a place of worship.

Although it st…