Tolstoy

Lev Tolstoy did nothing halfway. He was respected as much for his impressive aristocratic pedigree as his outspoken political views, brave and courageous military career, prodigious literary output, and, nearer the end of his life, religious austerity. As a national icon, he was celebrated; as a political dissenter, untouchable. He was the biggest celebrity in Russia. Tolstoy the family man was dictatorial, his larger-than-life personality intimidating. His wife, Sonya, ran the household and, it's reported, found time to revise the entire manuscript of War and Peace seven times. Apparently, running Tolstoy's life demanded as much from his family as from the writer himself. Bartlett (Wagner and Russia), an authority on Russian cultural history, objectively explores all facets of Tolstoy's life, from youth to looming public persona to controlling family man, producing an epic biography, tapping into newly available sources, that does justice to an epic figure.