Lev Nikolayevich Tolsto (Leo Tolstoy) was born in 1828 on September 9

th
and died November
20, 1910. He was a Russian Novelist who also wrote short stories; some of his most famous
works include Anna Karenina and War and Peace. Tolstoy was also a play writer and he wrote a
novella called The Kreutzer Sonata, which was performed on Broadway in 1906 on September
10
th
. Tolstoy was known to be a moral thinker and a social reformer. He was also known for
influencing Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr with his ideas on nonviolent resistance. I believe
that Mary Pipher included Tolstoy in the book, Writing to Change the World because his work
was some of the greatest dramatic and realistic fiction ever written. He made his works pieces of
art that never got dull or uninteresting. Pipher had stated that, Good writing astonishes its writer
first, and Tolstoy was her example. She wanted to show the reader how he fell in love with
Anna Karenina and how his writing connected to him; many people fell in love with that novel
too.

Here is a Sample of Leo Tolstoys work:
http://www.online-literature.com/tolstoy/anna_karenina/2/
Chapter 2: Anna Karenina
There was no solution, but that universal solution which life gives to all questions, even the
most complex and insoluble. That answer is: one must live in the needs of the day--that is, forget
oneself. To forget himself in sleep was impossible now, at least till nighttime; he could not go
back now to the music sung by the decanter-women; so he must forget himself in the dream of
daily life.

Art can compel people freely, gladly, and spontaneously to sacrifice themselves in the service
of man.-Leo Tolstoy