"War and Peace,"a tome, a slog, the sort of book you shouldn't read in bed because if you fall asleep, it could give you a concussion, right?
Only partly.
"War and Peace" is a long book, sure, but it's also a thrilling examination of history, populated with some of the deepest, most realistic characters you'll find anywhere.
And if its length intimidates you, just image how poor Tolstoy felt.
In 1863, he set out to write a short novel about a political dissident returning from exile in Siberia.
Five years later, he had produced a 1,200 page epic featuring love stories, battlefields, bankruptcies, firing squads, religious visions, the burning of Moscow, and a semi-domesticated bear, but no exile and no political dissidents.
Here's how it happened.
Tolstoy, a volcanic soul, was born to a famously eccentric aristocratic family in 1828.
By the time he was 30, he had already dropped out of Kazan University, gambled away the family fortune, joined the army, written memoirs, and rejected the literary establishment to travel Europe.
He then settled into Yasnaya Polyana, his ancestral mansion, to write about the return of the Decembrists, a band of well-born revolutionaries pardoned in 1856 after 30 years in exile.