This edition contains detailed introduction to this novel War And Peace, its author Leo Tolstoy and its translator Constance Garnett. Following is a short description: 'War and Peace', regarded as one of the central works of world literature and one of the longest novels, is written by the Russian author and philosopher Leo Tolstoy. War and Peace, first published in 1869, and Anna Karenina (1878) are considered his finest literary achievements. Newsweek in 2009 ranked 'War and Peace' first in its 'Top 100 Books'. In 2007, Time magazine ranked War and Peace third in its poll of the 10 greatest books of all time while Anna Karenina was ranked first. According to the Encyclopedia Britannica, "no single English novel attains the universality of Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace." Gustave Flaubert wrote to Turgenev "This is the first class work What an artist and what a psychologist .... very powerful indeed." John Galsworthy called War and Peace "the best novel that had ever been written." Romain Rolland wrote: "this work, like life itself, has no beginning, no end. It is life itself in its eternal movement." Thomas Mann considered War and Peace to be "the greatest ever war novel in the history of literature." Ernest Hemingway confessed, "I don't know anybody who could write about war better than Tolstoy did" "War and Peace" depicts the history of the French invasion of Russia and the impact of the Napoleonic era on Russian society through the stories of five Russian aristocratic families. First titled 'The Year 1805', this novel was serialized in The Russian Messenger in 1865-67. Tolstoy rewrote the entire story between 1866 and 1869 and published it as a single book in 1869 with an ending very different from the earlier serialized version. Leo Tolstoy was born at Yasnaya Polyana, 200 kilometers south of Moscow. The Tolstoy family was as of old Russian nobility that traced its ancestry to a mythical Lithuanian noble Indris. He was the fourth of five children of Count Nikolai Ilyich Tolstoy, a veteran of the Patriotic War of 1812, and Countess Mariya Tolstaya. His parents died when he was young and he and his siblings were brought up by relatives. In 1844, he began studying at Kazan University where his teachers described him as unable and unwilling to learn. Tolstoy left the university in the middle of his studies, returned to Yasnaya Polyana and spent much of his time in Moscow and Saint Petersburg. In 1851, after running up heavy gambling debts, he joined the army where he started writing. During his 1857 visit, Tolstoy witnessed a public execution in Paris, a traumatic experience that would mark the rest of his life. He wrote in a letter to his friend Vasily Botkin: "The truth is that the State is a conspiracy designed not only to exploit, but above all to corrupt its citizens ... Henceforth, I shall never serve any government anywhere." Tolstoy's concept of non-violence or Ahimsa was bolstered when he read a German version of the Tirukkural. He later instilled this concept in Mahatma Gandhi through his 'A Letter to a Hindu' when young Gandhi sought his advice. His European trip in 1860-61 shaped his political and literary development when he met Victor Hugo, who had finished his book Les Miserables. Tolstoy's political philosophy was also influenced by a March 1861 visit to French anarchist Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, then living in exile under an assumed name in Brussels. Apart from reviewing Proudhon's forthcoming publication, La Guerre et la Paix ('The War and The Peace' in French), Tolstoy discussed education with him. On September 23, 1862, Tolstoy married Sophia Andreevna Behrs, the daughter of a court physician. Tolstoy had 13 children from Sofia, eight of whom survived their childhood. Tolstoy died of pneumonia at Astapovo train station in 1910 at the age of 82 after a day's rail journey in south. The police tried to limit access to his funeral procession, but thou"