What is there to say, TOLSTOY was a master of his craft? A read through this book will tell you all you ever need to know about the written word.

I can highly recommend this great work. I do not think you will be disappointed.

Tolstoy is one of the great masters of fiction -- and of Christian fiction. And the stories you will find here are many of his best. His love for humanity shines through. These stories are so direct, so concrete, and they ring so true. One can't help reading them with a reverence that borders on awe.

The translation, too, by Louise and Aylmer Maude, is exquisite. It is done with such authority that it feels spontaneous and seamless, as if one is reading the actual words of Tolstoy, rather than those of some lesser intermediary. The Maudes are by far my favorite translators of Tolstoy.

The book is well done in every respect. I love everything about it -- right down to the bright whiteness of the pages; the paper quality is very good.

I recommend this book highly. It is one of my most prized volumes.

I turn to some of these stories repeatedly. Tolstoy gives searching portraits of obsessed souls in stories such as "The Devil" (an unforgettable account of lust), "Father Sergius," and "The Kreutzer Sonata." Here is a more "Dostoevskian" Tolstoy than we see in War and Peace. Providing balance in the collection are masterpieces such as "Hadji Murad." Don't overlook this book; it is a convenient compilation of some of the finest literary works of Russia's 19th century. I bought a second copy because my first one wore out.

This paperback gathers many of Lev Tolstoy's most masterfully crafted short works. The Death of Ivan Ilych, Hadji Murad, The Cossacks, The Kreutzer Sonata ... they are all here. While it is impossible to give an adequate review of each of the stories in this collection, I will say that Tolstoy's short stories are a joy to read. His style is vivid, clear, and engaging, and his themes are interesting and profound. Tolstoy tackles the issues of death, war, religion, sex, and others. While I do not agree with many of his views, the beauty and subtlety with which he expresses them is tremendous.

On a more technical note, the translation is more than adequate. While reading Tolstoy in Russian is best, this translation is seamless and does not interfere with the reading. I would enthusiastically recommend this collection to anyone who is intrigued by this influential and quirky author.

Leo Toadstool was a brilliant writer, and, although I didn't find his short pieces as brilliant as his novels, they are nonetheless brilliant. He is the Beatles of prose fiction.

Shoemaker Martin wins my 2nd Annual "best book read this year for the first time award." This little children's adaptation of a story by Leo Tolstoy blows away all the other books I read for the first time this year. There is no book that I have reviewed this year that I recommend more highly.

This is the story of Martin. Martin is a Russian man who spends his days mending shoes and his nights in the pleasurable reading of the Bible. One night, after reading how a rich man invited Jesus to stay at his house, Martin wishes that he could invite Jesus to his house and wonders what he would do if Jesus actually showed up.

The rest of the book is the story of what happens when Jesus comes. It is a story told with wonderfully spare language. Mrs. Watts' beautiful illustrations add to the warm feeling of this wintery tale.

There are few things I have ever reviewed that I recommend more than Shoemaker Martin--get this book!

Martin the shoemaker reads the scripture passage about an "unimportant" woman washing Jesus' feet while he was at dinner at an "important" person's house. Martin wonders how he would welcome the Lord if he came to Martin's house. That night Martin wakes up to see Jesus standing in the room and saying "tomorrow I am coming." Martin thinks its just a dream. The next morning Martin encounters several people that are in need in one way or another. That night Martin hears a voice that says something like - see, I did come just as I said I would. I was the woman that needed clothing and the man whom you fed and the boy to whom you were kind... etc. So, the message of this book is: Whatsoever you do to the least of my brother, that you do unto me.

This is a wonderful book. I've used it often in Sunday school and vacation bible school classes. I highly recommend it.

Somebody read this book at a Christmas party were I was invited a few years ago and it made that Christmas gathering very meaningful. I could not remember the entire title to buy it but with the amazon search I was able to track it down! I am so excited, I'm geting ready to order so I can add it to my Christmas family reading collection.

I agree with the previous two reviewers and join them in recommending this book, especially to those who have not yet read much Tolstoy. Rather than repeat what's been said, let me add one caveat and two complaints.

First, the caveat. If you already own a lot of Tolstoy's short fiction, you should preview this book to decide whether it offers enough new material to warrant buying. This anthology includes a number of familiar classics (mentioned in the other reviews), but you may decide it's still worth purchasing for the less common and early works.

Now for the complaints. _Kreutzer_Sonata_, or _Father_Sergius_? If I had to make an either-or choice, I think I would choose _Father_Sergius_. The editor chose _Kreutzer_Sonata_. A defensible choice, but not my preference.

A more serious complaint I have regards an omission. I would think that a Tolstoy anthology with "courage" and "conflict" in the subtitle would have to include _Hadji_Murat_. Its absence seems an oversight to me.

Despite these minor criticisms, I'm still giving this collection 5 stars on the merits of the works themselves. You will never regret time spent reading Tolstoy.

This collection of Tolstoy's work covers a period from 1852 (The Invaders) thru 1893 (Walk in the Light While There is Light). From the first published writing that marked him as a talent too good to ignore, through his religious conversion, and his soul-searching conclusions.

Some of his greatest short works are here. "The Recollections of a Billiard-Marker" is one of the early writings, and one of the bet descriptions of the effects of addiction (in this case an addiction to gambling) I have ever read. The Sevestopol Sketches (there are three of them) give one of the closest descriptions of men in war possible (the defense of Sevestopol during the Crimean War, which fell to the British and French). A group of religious parables. "The Death of Ivan Ilyitch" is a fantastic description of the internal battles waged when fighting with death. And "The Kreutzer Sonata" is a discussion of the place of men and women in society that should be required reading by anyone who thinks they understand the opposite sex.

There is enough in these stories to give the reader a chance to understand the author before attacking the larger and more famous major works.

There should be a higher number of stars that could be used for really classic fiction, and if there were, this book would warrant them. It includes many of Tolstoy's greatest short stories. The ones that made him famous. The ones that first showed his talent.

These stories span a period of over forty years, from "The Invaders" (1842) to "Walk in the Light While There is Still Light" (1893). We get a chance to not only read great stories, but to see the growth of a talent that started out better than most ever achieve.

"Recollections of a Billiard-Marker" (1855) is a less well known example of Tolstoy's ability to show the degeneration of a character. In this case it is by addiction to gambling that destroys a man, and the boy who works in a billiard hall who narrates. If this was the only story in the book, it would be worth buying, but it is not. It's not even the best one here.

Has there ever been a better description of men at war than "The Sevastapol Letters"? All three are here. Has anyone caught loneliness and despair better than "The Death of Ivan Ilyitch"? It's here.

No one catches class difference in fewer words. No one describes the ways we look at each other, the words we use, the words we don't use, better than this man.

Since this is a foreign novel, one must also mention the translation (by Isabel F. Hapsgood for the Sevestapol Letters, and Nathan Haskell Dole for everything else). They are good, they allow the language the feeling of another time, while allowing it to sound also current and easily readable.

A great way to cover much of the short fiction of one of the greatest fiction writers of all time.

One of my favorite novels is "Anna Karenina"; this trilogy starts off as strongly. In the first volume, "Childhood," the immediacy of experience is palpable, the vividness of sensations is high, the emotionality is less diluted by philosophical wonderings. Tolstoy's writing is evocative, clear, and engaging in this book. His writing becomes increasingly abstract with each volume in the series. As his protagonist moves through adolescence, his uncertainties, moodiness, and fickle nature bogged down the narrative, I thought. Of course, this reflects the state of mind of the young man, but in comparison with the brightness of the first volume, made for some tedious reading. The books do, however, show how masterful Tolstoy was from the beginning of his career.

I thought that this was a lovely novel, a deeply reflective work in which Tolstoy concentrates on the life of the character Nikolai Irtenyev from his early childhood to his days as an aspiring student.

It's told in picaresque style, and reminded me a lot of Proust's "In Search of Lost Time" (had Proust been influenced by Tolstoy at all?). As an example:

"It was almost dark in the room, and very hot; there was a mingled smell of mint, eau-de-cologne, camomile and Hoffman's drops. The smell struck me so forcibly that, not only when I happen to smell it but even when I recall it, my imagination instantly carries me back to that darkly stifling room and reproduces every minute detail of that terrible moment."

The novel is full of such fine descriptive passages - the approach of a thunderstorm being the one that sticks in my mind.

But the main strength of this work is, I thought, that Tolstoy does a good job of describing the sweetnesses of childhood but does not cover up the agonies of growing up. This is no sugary, romantic account. Childhood and adolescence are portrayed as immensely trying times, both for Nikolai himself and for his family and friends. All the emotions, anger, misunderstandings and disorientation are detailed by Tolstoy.

Fine Stuff.

G Rodgers

When this book first hit the stores in Russia about 150 years ago, folks didn't think too much of it, seeing it merely as a minor work by one who had read Dickens. Tolstoy himself claimed that no one taught him more about the art of fiction than Dickens, and the literary circles of Russia were Dickens-fanatics, Russia recieving his works only after England.

But beyond being similiar to David Copperfield, this book has moments in it that match parts of Karenin and War and Peace in beauty and texture if not in scope. What's amazing about Tolstoy is that his earliest work (this and his early war sketches) seem as artistically mature as his later, epic masterpieces. The death-obsession and intense philosophical and spiritual doubts that plagued Tolstoy later in life did not all of a sudden erupt while writing Anna Karenin; but rather they were always there in one form or another... an echo of adolescent sadness.

"The Sebastopol Sketches" comprises three pieces describing the experiences of Russian soldiers during the siege of Sebastopol in the Crimean War. Tolstoy served in the army at Sebastopol, and I got a feeling of authenticity in his writing.

Tolstoy's view of the war undergoes a change during the three sketches. In the first (and shortest) sketch, Tolstoy is patriotic, describing the soldiers, their cause and Russia as a whole in grand, heroic terms. By the end of the third sketch, the reader has been taken through the horrors of war, and Tolstoy is much more despairing, even disgusted at the whole sorry affair.

There are some constants, however: Tolstoy's descriptive writing is fine throughout - convincingly setting the scene against which the characters play out their parts. As the second and third sketches develop, Tolstoy becomes more interested in the human side of the war - that is to say, its impact upon the emotions and behaviour of individuals. These range through humour, excitement, stupidity, cupidity, heroism, cowardice and so on. When the reader gets to the story of Volodya Kozeltsov, the loss of innocence and idealism which war brings is exposed in full.

Fine, gripping stuff.

G Rodgers

The young Tolstoy took part in the defence of Sebastopol (1854-55) during the Crimean War, and these sketches (parts of which were written under fire) record his impressions of the drama and tumult of war. The first sketch, "Sebastopol in December" was published anonymously and attracted the attention of Tsar Alexander II and Turgenev. It is a short, emotionally patriotic piece recording the author's empathetic reaction to the bravery of the ordinary soldiers and sailors during the siege. "Sebastopol in May" is more ambitious and more ambiguous, recording the experiences of a group of Russian officers during an attack by the Allies on the 4th bastion of the defences, a position dreaded by everyone on the Russian side. There are no heroes in this piece, says Tolstoy, except "truth," as he depicts flawed human beings struggle to reconcile their petty vanities with the "higher" duties that have brought them to that terrible place. The final sketch, "Sebastopol in August," records the fall of Sebastopol through the eyes of the doomed Kozeltsov brothers and features some of the finest battle descriptions I have ever read. Tolstoy published it openly under his own name, and it seems to have helped him finally to choose literature rather than the army for his future career. "The Sebastopol Sketches" is a marvellous book not only for its own merits but also for the insight it gives us into a literary master trying out his wings for the first time.

In 1855, Tolstoy was a soldier in the Crimean War and a witness to many atrocities. One that would stay with him was the image of two children killed in a shelling. His experiences during the war made up the contents of his work The Sebastopol Sketches, many of which he drafted on the battlefield.

The book is divide in three short stories stem from Tolstoy's military experience during the Crimean War: "Sebastopol in December," "Sebastopol in May," and "Sebastopol in August 1855."

During this time, the young Tolstoy gave himself over to the decadent life that was common for men of his class, catching a venereal disease as well as drinking heavily and sustaining enormous gambling debts which included the loss of some of his prized property at Yasnaya.

I really enjoy reading this book,Tolstoy's reactions to the fighting at Sebastopol are really crude, if you are interesting in The Crimean War but from the Russian side you may find what you are looking for in this great book

for a young child, this book illustrates an important moral lesson in terms children and adults can appreciate. The illustrations are also quite charming. And who can resist a panda in need of assistance?

"The Three Questions" by Jon J. Muth will entertain very small children with its simple prose and moving illustrations (Muth is a famously gifted comic and children's illustrator). The lesson in this book, however, is valuable to anyone, of any age. We recently provided the book to a high school graduate who is about to take his first step towards independence.

To all who cherishes ethics and ethical living, this book is recommended.

I really liked the book, beautiful watercolor drawings, and a great plot, one of my favorite books.

This 365 day journey compiled by Tolstoy is a journal that he himself read year after year following his authorship of it. The book contains wisdom from the world's various sacred texts, including wisdom from the Christian, Buddhist, and Muslim traditions, and more. A wonderfully inspiring daily devotional that is perfect for open-minded individuals of all religions. Buy this book!!

...laid gradually, day by day. There are still critics of Tolstoy who view his religious phase of life with anything from consternation to disdain. The fact is that he brought a probing intellect as strong as anyone else's in Europe, searing psychological understanding, and voluminous reading to bear on the fundamental questions of life. In this book he collected the wisest sayings he could find on a multitude of topics, plus his own distillations of their wisdom, and arranged them by subject for daily meditation. One effect of this book, which I'm sure Tolstoy desired, was that you'll want to go back to his sources with renewed eagerness. One professional reviewer described this book as "chicken soup for the soul without the schmalz". It's more than chicken soup -- it's the bread of life.

A Calendar of Wisdom by Leo Tolstoy. Scribner, 1997. FOR THE FIRST TIME IN ENGLISH, THE LAST MAJOR WORK BY LEO TOLSTOY!!! Created by one of the world's best novelists as a guide for moral living, this beautiful treasure offers, as Tolstoy wrote, "a wise thought for every day of the year, from the greatest philosophers of all times and peoples." Most of the pages were created by Tolstoy himself in 1903-1910 and are dedicated to love, faith, kindness, knowledge, sacrifice, family, meditation, prayer, etc. For Leo Tolstoy, A Calendar of Wisdom (Russian title "Put zhizni"), was the most important project of his life, a book he proclaimed himself prouder that his materpieces WAR AND PIECE and ANNA KARENINA. Banned by Lenin during 75 years of of the Soviet regime for numerous quotes from the sacred texts of every major world religion, it is again a bestseller in its native land. "I hope that the readers may experience," Tolstoy wrote in 1908, in the preface, "the same elevated feeling which I have experienced when I was working on its creation, and which I experience again and again when I re-read it every day." It is better to know a few things which are good and necessary than many things which are useless and mediocre. -- Tolstoy You should study more to understand that you know little. --Monaigne The reason for rage is always inside of you. -- Tolstoy Bad books is a moral poison which dulls your intelllect. --Shopenhauer Light remains light, even if a blind man cannot see it. -- Tolstoy The translator, Peter Sekirin, is the author of a recent biography, THE DOSTOEVSKY ARCHIVE and is completing his PhD in Russian literature at the Universty of Toronto. END

This book is something you can easily read over the span of several sittings, as it is sectioned into several chapters that chronicle each era of Tolstoy's life, making it easy to read. An excellent source of both research and simple enjoyment.

Being a lover of Tolstoy's literature and philosophy, and having read brief snippets of Tolstoy's life in the preface of his novels, I was interested in learning more about the man himself. Wilson has produced a well researched biography that is informative and interesting to read. What I especially like is its clarity on what is fact and what are speculations based on his erratic diaries, using painstaking quotes, footnotes, literary excerpts, and bibliography to back up the author's and literary community's theories.

The result is a portrait of a man at odds with himself, who like Dostoevsky was a living representation of the duality of man. No wonder these writers were so profound at portaying the the human condition, mind, spirit, and soul. If only we could go back in time and walk with these men and speak with them personally, how rich we would be.

Tolstoy is one the greatest writers during what must be considered the heroic age of novel writing. He never makes a wrong move in his writing, but probably was one of the most unpleasant people ever to live. Wilson here gives us a view of both the sublime artist and the opinionated gad fly of his friends, family and country and presents a fairly complete picture of a divided man. This is a tell all book, but not in the usual sense. Wilson focuses on the inner life of Tolstoy rather than his day to day experiences which probably were not as meaningful to him as what went on inside. This probably is the best biogrpahy of Tolstoy in English. It is good for those who are familiar with Tolstoy's works and for those who are not.

Among it's more traditional strengths, Wilson's life of Tolstoy must be added to the exceedingly select list of laugh out loud biographies of Russian novelists. Throughout the book's considerable length and passionate examinations of Tolstoy's writing and the Russian history from which they grew, are superb jokes, asides, and sarcasm - in no way denigrating the tempestuous creator of War and Peace, but keeping a keen-eyed perspective on the many paradoxical facets of his long life.

Wilson's account is suffused with a deeply felt love of Tolstoy's writings, perfectly balanced by an appreciation for his absurdities. If you have read and loved War and Peace, Anna Karenina, or any of Tolstoy's works, this biography yields a rich and absorbing account of the life and history from which they sprung.

Tolstoy wrote some remarkable short fiction. There is, for example, the detached observer of war and its effect. The early stories based on his military experience in the Caucasus "The Raid," "The Woodfelling," and "The Prisoner of the Caucasus" are examples of this aspect of Tolstoy's craft. Tolstoy anticipated authors such as Stephen Crane and Ernest Hemingway in his unglamorous portrait of war. Tolstoy's slice of life sketches have little blood and thunder. The writing speaks more of futility than of glory or Mother Russia. Except for wasteful, impersonal death, men at war do not progress; their only goal is survival. Then there is the spiritual side of Tolstoy's art. Simple parables patterned on the Gospels in their truth and biblical purity. The title piece speaks of a landowner's greed and its result. "Where Love Is, God Is," and "What Men Live By" are examples of the later Tolstoy and his spiritual views. Although Tolstoy was grounded in Chritianity, Russian Orthodoxy and organized religions left him cold. Tolstoy was more mystic than cleric. His spiritual views rejected dogma and flowed from springs of human compassion. Love inevitably provokes action. Feed the hungry, comfort the sick, and care for widows and orphans. Then we find God among us. This collection of stories has an insightful introduction by editor and biographer A. N. Wilson. It's a good cross sample of Tolstoy's short fiction. ;-)

This is a great book of short stories with an unabashed Christian moral slant. Very entertaining.

these stories have changed my life. tolstoy makes us want to love one another. i think the world would be a better place if everybody read these stories.