How to Write Like Tolstoy: A Journey Into the Minds of Our Greatest Writers is the latest in a line of literary how-to guides by critics and cultural commentators.

Awed and daunted by his “massive straightforwardness”, we confront him “Rather as one is supposed to approach an elephant” – “not from the front but the side”.Ī lively, lucid and instructive new book from publisher and writer Richard Cohen informs the interested reader (and presumably the wannabe writer) not how to tackle Tolstoy but how to master his craft. We find ourselves reading him in a different way to other writers. Rich in complex truths and surprising anecdotes, the result is a revealing exploration of both the aims and art of history-making, one that will lead us to rethink how we learn about our past and about ourselves.For the literary critic James Wood, reading Tolstoy is a singular reading experience: his characters feel so lifelike, his fictive worlds so true. From the origins of history writing, when such an activity itself seemed revolutionary, through to television and the digital age, Cohen brings captivating figures to vivid light, from Thucydides and Tacitus to Voltaire and Gibbon, Winston Churchill and Henry Louis Gates.

“Scholarly, lively, quotable, up-to-date, and fun” (Hilary Mantel, author of the bestselling Thomas Cromwell trilogy), Making History investigates the published works and private utterances of our greatest chroniclers to discover the agendas that informed their-and our-views of the world. Cohen argues, for example, that some historians are practitioners of “Bad History” and twist reality to glorify themselves or their country.

There are many stories we can spin about previous ages, but which accounts get told? And by whom? Is there even such a thing as “objective” history? In this “witty, wise, and elegant” ( The Spectator), book, Richard Cohen reveals how professional historians and other equally significant witnesses, such as the writers of the Bible, novelists, and political propagandists, influence what becomes the accepted record. A “supremely entertaining” ( The New Yorker ) exploration of who gets to record the world’s history-from Julius Caesar to William Shakespeare to Ken Burns-and how their biases influence our understanding about the past.

Richard cohen how to write like tolstoy