I have a theory that War and Peace would be a better book at half the length. Not because it’s ponderous — it isn’t (on the contrary, it really is a literary tour de force from beginning to end, making its length one of its charms), but because everyone always talks about how long it is, and no one ever talks about the point Tolstoy was trying to make in the telling of the tale. A pity, as the message he was trying to convey is perhaps more relevant to us today than ever before. The thrust of his argument is that events are not driven by the will-to-power of certain individuals. Rather, everyone, from the lowest in society all the way up to Napoleon himself, is being carried along on a tide of circumstances. All they can do, all any of us can do, is play out our scene as it comes to us.