Tolstoy Leo. War and Peace

Signet Classics.Translated by Ann Dunnican. With a New introduction by Pat Conroy.Orphaned at age nine, Count Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910) was brought up by an elderly aunt and educated by French tutors until he matriculated at Kazan University. In 1847, he gave up his studies and, after several aimless years, volunteered for military duty, serving as a junior officer in the Crimean War before retiring in 1857. In 1862, Tolstoy married Sophie Behrs, a marriage that was to become, for him, bitterly unhappy. His diary, started in 1847, was used for self-study and self-criticism, and it served as the source from which he drew much of the material that appeared not only in his great novels War and Peace (1869) and Anna Karenina (1877), but also in his shorter works. Seeking religious justification for his life, Tolstoy evolved a new Christianity based upon his own interpretation of the Gospels.Pat Conroy was born in Atlanta, Georgia, and burst onto the literary scene in 1972 with his acclaimed second book, The Water Is Wide, a memoir about teaching in a poor black school in South Carolina. His bestselling novels include The Great Santini (1977), The Prince of Tides (1986), The Lords of Discipline (1980), and Beach Music (1995).