David Kelly is an instructor of Creative Writing and Literature at College of Lake County jznd Oakton Community College inIllinois. In the following essay, Kelly discusses why the people most likely to avoid reading War and Peace are the ones who would probably enjoy and benefit from it most.

It would be difficult to question the quality of Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace. Although most critics would not go as far as E. M. Forster did in Aspects of the Novel, proclaiming this to be the greatest novel ever written, all would swear to its overall excellence. As with any work, critics consider different ideas about its relative merits and weaknesses, no matter how revered.

Still, with such universal acclaim, no one ever feels the need to ask why War and Peace isn't read more often—anyone who has ever looked at it on a bookshelf, taking...