On the eve of the 150th anniver­sary of its pub­li­ca­tion, War and Peace is con­sid­ered by many to be the great­est nov­el ever writ­ten. It is also one of the most chal­leng­ing (and feared) texts, com­ing in at 1,500 pages, 365 chap­ters, and 566,000 words. What it is not, how­ev­er, is out­dat­ed: in Give War and Peace a Chance, Kauf­man argues that the lessons taught in Tol­stoy’s epic — a book about peo­ple try­ing to cre­ate a mean­ing­ful life for them­selves in a coun­try torn apart by rev­o­lu­tion, social change, and spir­i­tu­al con­fu­sion — are lessons that remain rel­e­vant in today’s world. Touch­ing on top­ics from courage to romance to par­ent­ing to death, Kauf­man shows how Tol­stoy’s wis­dom can reframe mod­ern read­ers’ very under­stand­ing of what it means to be alive in trou­bled times, and to sur­vive them.