War And Peace – Leo Tolstoy. It took me a while to get through this book and all of it’s many pages. As a matter of fact, I think I started about three times before I finally made it all the way through. That was many years ago and it is one of the most influential books of my life time. The narrative gives a thorough description of Russia in the time of Napoleon’s invasion approximately 1804. Plus what life was like for the characters in the book. This vast book, with over 1,000 pages, has a great cast of characters.
Tolstoy’s most impactful insight for me was when Count Bolkonsky, who is one of the novel’s main characters, is injured in a battle. He’s fallen from his horse and is lying on the ground when Napoleon, who was Bolkansky’s opponent, is riding his horse surveying the results of his victory. Bolkonsky looks up from a prone position on the ground and realizes how small Napoleon looks compared with the sky and clouds above him. My take from that was that people, no matter their significance on our world, are small compared to the planet, sky, and universe around them.
Atlas Shrugged – Ayn Rand. Like War and Peace, Atlas Shrugged is a huge novel of about 1,000 pages and many characters. Rand’s original title was “The Strike”. That name would have been much more descriptive of the story described but would have also given away its main theme much more quickly than Atlas Shrugged. Also, like War and Peace, it took me a while and three try’s to get through all of its pages. The back story of this novel is that Ayn Rand lived much of her life in the Soviet Union where almost everything in life was determined via a communist system where the party bosses ruled over the workers. The State owned the means of production. And most people lived or died determined by their communist overlords. She hated the socialistic system where effort did not necessarily determine success or income.
In the book, the government followed a Soviet type /style system where the government ruled the people by much like what the modern USA is run. The government makes rules that determine the outcome of free enterprise. Don’t like gas cars, make rules that cut short the gasoline supply that gas cars depend on and thus makes gas expensive. Or just issue laws where, in the name of preventing the climate from changing, cars that are powered by gas cannot be sold.
In the book, the USA is slowly failing because of the socialistic rules of government, but is also mysteriously falling apart because valuable leaders of industries are disappearing. They are going somewhere and no one knows where.
The key element of this book that influenced my life is the part where an industrial company develops a fabulous motor that can change the world and therefore becomes rich. The company then switches their pay system to giving workers money based upon need and not hard work and value to the company. This ruins the company because the company tribunal that hears the workers pleas gives more money to the need requesters and not so much to the inventors and hard workers. It was obvious to me that companies or countries who reward based on need and not hard work and smart work, basically merit, were going to fail. If you don’t follow Adam Smith’s invisible hand (from his book, The Wealth of Nations) you will not get the best results.
The Seven Mysteries Of Life – Guy Murchie – I heard the author speak during an interview on a Los Angeles radio talk show in the 1970’s. After hearing him I had to get his book and read it cover to cover. The book discussed seven mysteries that Murchie felt were the main one’s that face members of our populace who try to untangle the questions and meaning of life.
He goes through elaborate computations and descriptions that have subjects such as, what is the difference between plant life and animal life. His conclusion is, not much. Basically animals can move more quickly than plants. Other than that both live in our world with varying amounts of knowledge on how to get along with living. He talks about the mathematical odds of animals changing via Darwin’s system of natural selection is likely only partially true. He commented that 40,000 monkeys seated in front of typewriters cannot write any of the great novels of the World, much less all of them. The World is much, much too complex to be run by chance.
And the conclusion is, this is proof of the existence of God. When I read this, I knew he was correct.
When asked in his interview on the radio show what he thought was the meaning of life on Earth was, his response was, “Life is like a soul school”. We come here to train for what comes afterwards. I agree.
The reasons for books and classic literature. Today in 2025 books of “weight” and insight are mostly passed over for You Tube Videos and light writing via the printed page or audio “books”. Passing on books written by great authors both fiction and non fiction is a mistake. Titles of work become classic or weighty when they are written by great men or women of skill and talent. I do not read as much as I used to because it seems like I am always busy doing other things. This is my mistake. If you want to live a full life, in my opinion, it is wise to partake of the ability some great people have to put brilliance on the pages. If they are turned into audio and listened to that is fine. The result is like seeing a great painting live in a museum instead of on a computer screen. Or watching a great symphony, band, or singer perform live and not from a streamed performance via a small speaker. When I read a brilliant author such as Hemingway, Austin, Dickens, Tolstoy, or Shakespeare it is an opportunity to improve life. They have improved mine.
Bob Nuttmann 
Great post – love the last sentence – so true! Linda 🤩