I read War and Peace last year also. I was fascinated with his take on Napoleon...
Also read War and Peace last year. What impressed me most about Tolstoy and Shakespeare is how they understood human nature and behavior. Throughout history the bells and whistles may change but those personality characteristics and behaviors seem to perennially recur almost regardless of culture. Both authors in their “fiction” wove in a beautiful way just how those characteristics are at the core of history and the events that passed. The fact that these people seem to recur whatever the age or time maybe why history always seems to repeat. Can’t emphasise enough how important it is for thoughtful, educated people to read and be familiar with this literature. Sadly ignorance is now beginning to dominate even at so called institutions of high learning and these insightful authors are ignored or disparaged as “dead white Europeans”.
I also read War and Peace last year! I really enjoyed it! BBC made a good mini-series of it that follows the book amazingly well. Very interesting and underrated period of history.
The Bondarchuk movie of War And Peace(1966) follows the book nicely but had to leave out huge amounts of the book or else the movie would have been about 36 hours long.
If you get the movie get the original Russian Cinema Counsel version, not the KULTUR version which has been chopped, pan and scan along with faded colors.