100 Great Books (Book 12: War and Peace)

Dismantling the great man theory

This is the twelfth book of our new course on 100 Great Books. You can read the brief about why the course exists and check out previous editions.
Before we get started, this debate will be pertinent.

War and Peace: The Illusion of Command

Published in 1869, War and Peace is Leo Tolstoy critiques the popular belief that decisive individuals shape history (The Great Man Theory). He builds a world shaped largely by the anonymous drift of millions of small actions - fear, hunger, weather, fatigue, rumors, hesitation. He insists that the stories we tell are manufactured after the fact, to hide how little we understand about the arc of history.

Tolstoy, the Author

Tolstoy was a moral revolutionary. Born into the aristocracy, he spent his life rebelling against privilege, violence, and the machinery of empire.

He fought in wars, ran schools for peasants, denounced church orthodoxy, embraced radical pacifism, and eventually founded a spiritual movement that influenced Gandhi.

War and Peace is him at war with the entire Western tradition of hero-worship:
Alexander the Great, Caesar, Napoleon, among others. Tolstoy strips them of mystique and restores them to humanity.

The Big Questions War and Peace Tackles

• Do great individuals actually shape history?

• Why do we cling to certain narratives?

• What does meaning look like where intentions rarely match outcomes?