Tolstoy On War

Tolstoy On War

Author: Rick McPeak

Publisher: Cornell University Press

Published: 2012-08-22

Total Pages: 257

ISBN-13: 0801465893

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In 1812, Napoleon launched his fateful invasion of Russia. Five decades later, Leo Tolstoy published War and Peace, a fictional representation of the era that is one of the most celebrated novels in world literature. The novel contains a coherent (though much disputed) philosophy of history and portrays the history and military strategy of its time in a manner that offers lessons for the soldiers of today. To mark the two hundredth anniversary of the French invasion of Russia and acknowledge the importance of Tolstoy's novel for our historical memory of its central events, Rick McPeak and Donna Tussing Orwin have assembled a distinguished group of scholars from diverse disciplinary backgrounds-literary criticism, history, social science, and philosophy-to provide fresh readings of the novel. The essays in Tolstoy On War focus primarily on the novel's depictions of war and history, and the range of responses suggests that these remain inexhaustible topics of debate. The result is a volume that opens fruitful new avenues of understanding War and Peace while providing a range of perspectives and interpretations without parallel in the vast literature on the novel.


Tolstoy Together: 85 Days of War and Peace with Yiyun Li

Tolstoy Together: 85 Days of War and Peace with Yiyun Li

Author: Yiyun Li

Publisher: Public Space Books

Published: 2021-08-10

Total Pages: 256

ISBN-13: 9781734590760

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A reader's companion for Tolstoy's epic novel, War and Peace, inspired by the online book club led by Yiyun Li. For the writer Yiyun Li, whenever life has felt uncertain, War and Peace has been the novel she turns to. In March 2020, as the pandemic tightened its grip, Li and A Public Space launched #TolstoyTogether, a War and Peace book club, on Twitter and Instagram, gathering a community (that came to include writers such as Joyce Carol Oates, Garth Greenwell, and Carl Phillips) for 85 days of prompts, conversation, succor, and pleasure. It was an experience shaped not only by the time in which they read but also the slow, consistent rhythm of the reading. And the extraordinary community that gathered for a moment each day to discuss Tolstoy, history, and the role of art in a time like this. Tolstoy Together captures that moment, and offers a guided, communal experience for past and new readers, lovers of Russian literature, and all those looking for what Li identifies as "his level-headedness and clear-sightedness offer[ing] a solidity during a time of duress.


A Scientific Way of War

A Scientific Way of War

Author: Ian C. Hope

Publisher: U of Nebraska Press

Published: 2015-08

Total Pages: 400

ISBN-13: 0803277164

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While faith in the Enlightenment was waning elsewhere by 1850, at the United States Military Academy at West Point and in the minds of academy graduates serving throughout the country Enlightenment thinking persisted, asserting that war was governable by a grand theory accessible through the study of military science. Officers of the regular army and instructors at the military academy and their political superiors all believed strongly in the possibility of acquiring a perfect knowledge of war through the proper curriculum. A Scientific Way of War analyzes how the doctrine of military science evolved from teaching specific Napoleonic applications to embracing subjects that were useful for war in North America. Drawing from a wide array of materials, Ian C. Hope refutes earlier charges of a lack of professionalization in the antebellum American army and an overreliance on the teachings of Swiss military theorist Antoine de Jomini. Instead, Hope shows that inculcation in West Point’s American military curriculum eventually came to provide the army with an officer corps that shared a common doctrine and common skill in military problem solving. The proliferation of military science ensured that on the eve of the Civil War there existed a distinctly American, and scientific, way of war.


War and Peace

War and Peace

Author: Rimvydas Šilbajoris

Publisher:

Published: 1995

Total Pages: 176

ISBN-13:

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"In War and Peace: Tolstoy's Mirror of the World, author Rimvydas Silbajoris explores the thesis that Tolstoy's landmark is indeed a statement about life in its totality, as if the earth were a unified organism narrating itself in the uncountable processes of living and dying. This totality, Silbajoris argues, is a model as much of the outside world as of inner human universes, organically fused together by Tolstoy's creative energy." "In this incisive study, Silbajoris leaps beyond previous examinations of War and Peace, providing a rich interpretation of landscape, object, action, and feeling. Offering a background sketch of the factors that contributed to its conception, development, and execution, he follows the novel through each of several drafts. This careful and meticulous foundation sets the stage for a truly fertile analysis exploring the three basic narrative dimensions of the work: as a historical novel; as a story of fictional characters living among great figures of history; and as a set of philosophical propositions that elucidate Tolstoy's views on history, free will, and the infinite complexity of emotions as they intersect with the epic forces of life. Viewed through the elaborate lattice of human experience presented in the text, each detail of the novel, Silbajoris shows, contains and reveals the fullness of life - and a sense of the intimate bond between individuals and the vast panorama of history."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved


War and Peace

War and Peace

Author: Leo Tolstoy

Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform

Published: 2017-07-09

Total Pages: 514

ISBN-13: 9781548766849

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War and Peace is a novel by the Russian author Leo Tolstoy, which is regarded as a central work of world literature and one of Tolstoy's finest literary achievements. The novel chronicles the history of the French invasion of Russia and the impact of the Napoleonic era on Tsarist society through the stories of five Russian aristocratic families. Portions of an earlier version, titled The Year 1805, were serialized in The Russian Messenger from 1865 to 1867. The novel was first published in its entirety in 1869. Tolstoy said War and Peace is "not a novel, even less is it a poem, and still less a historical chronicle". Large sections, especially the later chapters, are a philosophical discussion rather than narrative. Tolstoy also said that the best Russian literature does not conform to standards and hence hesitated to call War and Peace a novel. Instead, he regarded Anna Karenina as his first true novel. According to the Encyclop�dia Britannica, "no single English novel attains the universality of Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace.


Empire and Gunpowder

Empire and Gunpowder

Author: Moumita Chowdhury

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2022-07-19

Total Pages: 181

ISBN-13: 1000603970

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This book focuses on the relation between technology, warfare and state in South Asia in the eighteenth and the nineteenth centuries. It explores how gunpowder and artillery played a pivotal role in the military ascendancy of the East India Company in India. The monograph argues that the contemporary Indian military landscape was extremely dynamic, with contemporary indigenous polities (Mysore, the Maratha Confederacy and the Khalsa Kingdom) attempting to transform their military systems by modelling their armies on European lines. It shows how the Company established an edge through an efficient bureaucracy and a standardised manufacturing system, while the Indian powers primarily focused on continuous innovation and failed to introduce standardisation of production. Drawing on archival records from India and the UK, this volume makes a significant intervention in our understanding of the rise of the British Empire in South Asia. It will be of great interest to scholars and researchers of history, especially military history, military and strategic studies and South Asian studies.


War and Peace

War and Peace

Author: Valentina Vadi

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2020-05-18

Total Pages: 592

ISBN-13: 9004426035

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This treatise investigates the emergence of the early modern law of nations, focusing on Alberico Gentili’s contribution to the same. A religious refugee and Regius Professor at the University of Oxford, Alberico Gentili (1552–1608) lived in difficult times of religious wars and political persecution. He discussed issues that were topical in his lifetime and remain so today, including the clash of civilizations, the conduct of war, and the maintenance of peace. His idealism and political pragmatism constitute the principal reasons for the continued interest in his work. Gentili’s work is important for historical record, but also for better analysing and critically assessing the origins of international law and its current developments, as well as for elaborating its future trajectories.