Books: Tolstoy, Troglodyte

LEO TOLSTOY (836 pp.) — Ernest J. Simmons—Little, Brown ($5).

The Russian writer Turgenev, entertaining a visitor one day in 1855, kept the conversation in whispers for fear of waking Count Tolstoy, who was asleep in the next room. "He's like this all the time," Turgenev explained. "He has come from his battery at Sevastopol, is staying with me, and has gone off on a tangent. Sprees, gypsies, and cards every night; then he sleeps like the dead until two o'clock in the day. . . ."

One of the best things about this new full-length...