Customer Reviews

What Men Live By (ILLUSTRATED)

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I was overwhelmed by tears of compassion on reading this short story. Count Leo Tolstoy's three lessons are gems to be memorized. I bought three copies of the Peter Pauper Press edition (nd) and gave them all away as gifts of love in the 1980's, alas.

Tolstoy was passionate about the battle between good and evil, and in each of these short stories, he shows us another simple yet clear view of the struggle. In "Where God Is, Love Is",he illustrates the lesson from Matthew xxv:'Inasmuch as ye did unto one of these my brethren, even these least, ye did it unto me'. Each story shows us another moral lesson, told through characters as recognizable in today's world as they were when these stories were written over a century ago.

You know sometimes how you reach for a book hoping to be inspired somehow, but you're totally disappointed because it's just filled with the same-old same-old? GET 'WHAT MEN LIVE BY' NOW!
First of all, the Master of the Novel TOLSTOY is never routine.
Second of all, he taps into his very soul as profoundly as other Russian writers including Dostoevsky and Pasternak.
When I had the occasion to read this very short (an armchair read of no more than an hour, tops) novelette, I was deeply depressed and needed someone to "pull me up." This selection did so because he did what is so rare with writers in English--he wed Christian principle to universal human longing and a deeply-anchored sense of hope in assurance that Rev Robert Schuler or the late Rev Norman Vincent Peale have never matched.
IF YOU WONDER, CAN A PERSON OF FAITH WHOSE HOPES HAVE BEEN DASHED AGAIN AND AGAIN, EVER FIND INSPIRATION AND PRAY TO GOD AGAIN--take this elixir now. As the angel admonished St. Augustine of Hippo, "Take up and read."
Be forewarned though, if you have tears to shed, "prepare to shed them now."

I stumbled onto this book while working as a church secretary. It was in the library. I fell in love with it and have loved it ever since. The story is utterly charming and inspiring, and the illustrations are gorgeous.

I have even given this as a gift to a friend. Thank goodness for Amazon making it available again!

One of the best means of communicating truth is through story-telling (see Jesus). Tolstoy clearly understood this and this short story does more than tell a story it plants the seed of truth deeply in the human heart. The plot is not predictable, keeps you interested and leads you somewhere important. Well worth your time.

Leo Tolstoy will always be regarded as a Russian national
treasure. This is a very short and sparse story yet his skill
is such that he summons the essence of what it means to
live, loose yet still love. With this scant amount of prose we feel the
cold, the hunger, and the suffering. He reminds us all of
our shortsightedness, of our need to judge and just how
wrong we are so many times. It is the story of a someone
falling from grace and returning to the light. This is a biblical

story and perhaps every parent should read this to his or
her children once every year until they are grown. Very
moving, for best effect, read it by candlelight.