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War and Peace: A Norton Critical Edition (Norton Critical Editions) Paperback – January 17, 1996

by Leo Tolstoy (Author), George Gibian (Editor), Louise Maude (Translator),
4.4 4.4 out of 5 stars 2,072 ratings
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The text of this revised Norton Critical Edition of Leo Tolstoy’s epic novel is based on the Louise and Aylmer Maude translation. The editor has made revisions where appropriate; the annotations have also been revised and expanded. Three maps of Napoleon’s campaigns and battles in Russia are included, making the military aspects of the novel easier to follow.

"Backgrounds and Sources" includes the publication history of War and Peace, selections from Tolstoy’s letters and diaries as well as three drafts of his introduction to the novel that elucidate the its evolution, and an 1868 article by Tolstoy in which he reacts to his critics.

"Criticism" includes twenty essays, seven of them new, that provide diverse perspectives on the novel by Nikolai Strakhov, V. I. Lenin, Henry James, Isaiah Berlin, D. S. Mirsky, Kathryn Feuer, Lydia Ginzburg, Richard Gustafson, Gary Saul Morson, and Caryl Emerson, among others.

A Chronology and Selected Bibliography are also included.
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  1. Print length
    1200 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    W. W. Norton & Company
  4. Publication date
    January 17, 1996
  5. Dimensions
    5.6 x 1.3 x 9.3 inches
  6. ISBN-10
    039396647X
  7. ISBN-13
    978-0393966473
  8. See all details
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Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910), a giant of world literature, is the author of many classics, including War and Peace and Anna Karenina.

George Gibian was Goldwin Smith Professor of Russian and Comparative Literature at Cornell University. His honors include Fulbright, Guggenheim, American Philosophical Society, and Rockefeller Foundation fellowships. He was the author of The Man in the Black Coat: Russia’s Lost Literature of the Absurd, The Interval of Freedom: Russian Literature During the Thaw, and Tolstoj and Shakespeare. He was the editor of the Norton Critical Editions of Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina and War and Peace, and Gogol’s Dead Souls, and of the Viking Penguin Portable Nineteenth-Century Russian Reader. Professor Gibian’s articles have appeared in the Wall Street Journal, The New Republic, the Christian Science Monitor, and Newsday, among others.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ W. W. Norton & Company; Second edition (January 17, 1996)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 1200 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 039396647X
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0393966473
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 2.31 pounds
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.6 x 1.3 x 9.3 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.4 4.4 out of 5 stars 2,072 ratings

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  1. Leo Tolstoy

    Leo Tolstoy

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    Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910) wrote two of the great novels of the nineteenth century, War and Peace and Anna Karenina.

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  2. Daniel H. Shubin

    Daniel H. Shubin

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Customer reviews

4.4 out of 5 stars
4.4 out of 5
2,072 global ratings
Shoddy print
2 Stars
Shoddy print
This book is beautifully printed and designed with the golden-edges pages and hard cover colors. However, this particular reprint falls short. It’s missing the original copyright data from its first English release, has an incomplete table of contents, includes no character summary table (like the better prints do), and has many typos. For example, page 111 “the Emperor Francis merely looked fixedly into his face and just nodded to him with to him with his long head.” There are similar distracting typos every 20 pages it seems. I definitely recommend the book, just not this edition from Barnes & Noble, Inc. by Sterling Publishing Co.
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Top reviews from the United States

Rebeka
5.0 out of 5 stars Relevant
Reviewed in the United States on April 15, 2024
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This book has references to mental health, abuse, neglect, if you understand such things, it is very relevant in that it speaks of things happening now in the world.
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Sara Wisewoman
5.0 out of 5 stars Finally, after eight decades, I read it!
Reviewed in the United States on July 26, 2020
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I can’t count the number of times I tried to read War and Peace over my lifetime, each time giving up in under forty pages, entirely confused by who people were, and the context in which they were living. But finally, all because of the Covid-19 need to shelter in place for people in their 80s and personally susceptible to lung infections, I read the book in its entirety. I am entirely wowed by it.

Reading it in a small group of three—five chapters a day accompanied by a daily 15-30 minute video-call/discussion—I have just finished this masterpiece. I was not prepared to be so blown away by such mastery of writing, although I knew the story was compelling. But over and over, I was amazed and wowed by how much Tolstoy could say in one or two sentences about a person or a situation.

Not knowing any nineteenth century Russian history, to speak of, the plot drove me to the internet dozens of times to look up a battle or an historic character that pepper the pages of this saga. The masterful intermingling of fictional characters who grow and change as a result of their experiences with historic movers and shakers is rich and thought provoking More than once (actually, probably about twenty times) my fellow readers and I noted stunning parallels to modern times. We are not alone in living with corruption in leaders. it was, at times, as if Tolstoy were directly speaking to us in the 21st century.

Yes, there are sections that are really tough to read, especially the second epilogue. I fell asleep several times plodding my way through that,but after making it all the way through its 1,500 pages, I wasn’t going to stop reading until every word of the book had been read! And I couldn’t be happier. Not only am I proud of myself of accomplishing this literary goal at age 80, but I bow in homage to it the author of this timeless masterpiece.
181 people found this helpful
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Scott Burgan
4.0 out of 5 stars Worth a Read (Audible Saved Me)
Reviewed in the United States on May 16, 2023
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This book was better than I thought. But, being honest, I was reading maybe 15 minutes a day and not making much progress for an 800 page book. I decided to give Audible a try and that did the trick. I would agree that this is a masterpiece. At first, I thought this was going to be an 1800s version of a soap opera. As I got into it, I found the characters relatable and believable. His use of metaphors was fantastic. I particularly enjoyed Andrew's comparison of war to a game of chess. I did not care for the second epilogue - too complex for me!
6 people found this helpful
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M Dickens
5.0 out of 5 stars long… but we all know that!
Reviewed in the United States on July 30, 2023
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Although being a very long book to read, I liked it and learned a lot. I found Denisov’s rhotacism a charming trait and enjoyed his story line. The descriptions of Prince Andrews’ impending death experience were vivid and very well-written. The passage regarding the start Natasha’s healing resonated with me: “…the layer of slime that covered her soul and seemed impenetrable, delicate young shoots of grass were already sprouting…”

I learned a lot about the art of war and expectations or rules versus what actually occurred. Morale plays such an important role in determining who reigns supreme. Having hindsight can teach us a lot but it is also clouded by interpretation and POV.

I’ve read a lot about Russian history, but the book has rekindled my interest in learning more, along with wanting to learn more about Bonaparte and the French Revolution.
2 people found this helpful
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VertigoWI
5.0 out of 5 stars “Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.” – Soren Kierkegaard
Reviewed in the United States on May 5, 2017
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“Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.” – Soren Kierkegaard

No trains, planes or automobiles; no steam engines (until 1817), no morphine, penicillin, sterile environments; no phones, no cell phones, no telegraph, no electric light; no photography; but about 50 years before our American Civil War, Darwin’s On the Origin of Species.

War and Peace is not a pure novel. It is a conglomerate of an epic story of Russian families during the height of the Napoleonic Wars and a philosophical discourse. But most is a romantic story. It has such rich character building prose that one cannot succumb to feeling for these characters and knowing these characters and how and why they reacted and behaved as they did from 1805 to 1820.

One grows to dislike a character and later one finds oneself surprised to admire him, seeing him in a new light. For me, I must admit, I was teary eyed during some scenes, especially when I sensed an inevitable conclusion or something that I can’t really explain while I was reading it. And it wasn’t just someone’s inevitable death, but also an inevitable love.

Don’t deny yourself the pleasure of reading this page turner! There are 365 chapters in 15 Books and 2 epilogs. Each chapter is a “quick read”, Do the math, there are 957 pages in my Kindle version (translated by Maude Alymer; forward2.wordpress.com) Each chapter compels you to read the next. Tolstoy is quite a craftsman in this regard.
8 people found this helpful
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Noomin
3.0 out of 5 stars There is a better, revised edition but this will do in a pinch
Reviewed in the United States on February 9, 2021
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This is the Maude translation, which is (as I understand it) the definitive one. The translation has since been revised and updated, but not, I think, for Kindle. The most important difference is that the Maudes translated all the French into English, but without indicating that the characters are speaking French. Also missing: an introduction; a list of the enormous cast of characters with all of the variants of their names; helpful editorial apparatuses that explain things for the modern reader. For another $15-20 you can get the new Oxford edition in hardback, which revises this definitive translation by restoring the French (which it translates in the footnotes), and contains lots of useful information to boot. It's not as physically massive as I had feared! This edition might even make for a decent read-along for those moments when you want to remember where else you encountered a particular character. I suspect I will use it that way, now that I have the Oxford.
47 people found this helpful
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Top reviews from other countries

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Frederico da Rocha Mello
5.0 out of 5 stars Livro impecável
Reviewed in Brazil on February 9, 2024
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Trabalho excelente nesta edição. Tive um problema durante a entrega, mas veio sem nenhum arranhão. Recomendo.
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Kindle Customer
5.0 out of 5 stars Timeless. Exquisite.
Reviewed in India on February 11, 2024
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To add any words for this timeless classic would not do any justice. On a quest to understand life, this classic is a guiding companion. At times it feels like the apparent story is just a guise constructed to convey the deep philosophical currents from the author. Indescribable. Got thoroughly soaked in to the book...
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Amazon Kunde
5.0 out of 5 stars Beautiful book for readers and collectors
Reviewed in Germany on July 16, 2021
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Beautiful cover art and good quality print
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Karl
5.0 out of 5 stars Should be required reading for everyone who can.
Reviewed in Canada on March 29, 2020
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I enjoyed it. Took me probably two weeks to read. There are shades of Jane Austen in the social scenes, the historical war accounts are engrossing and the philosophical tear-down at the end was heavy going but inspirational.
2 people found this helpful
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Client d'Amazon
5.0 out of 5 stars Version Kindle
Reviewed in France on December 18, 2016
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Bonjour, j'ai acheté ce livre il y a quelques mois sur votre site et j'ai aussi acheté un kindle depuis. Je me rappelle qu'à l'achat une version gratuite sur kindle m'avait été proposé mais je n'en possédé pas encore un. Est-il possible d'avoir un code pour mettre ce livre sur mon kindle ? Désolée si j'emploie des nouveaux termes, ceci est tout nouveau pour moi :)

Bonne journée et merci d'avance.
Marie-Aude
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