Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy was born on September 9, 1828 in Russia. He is usually referred to as Leo Tolstoy. He was a Russian author who is regarded as one of the greatest authors of all time. Leo Tolstoy is best known for his novels War and Peace (1869) and Anna Karenina (1877). Tolstoy's fiction includes dozens of short stories and several novellas such as The Death of Ivan Ilyich, Family Happiness, and Hadji Murad. He also wrote plays and numerous philosophical essays. Tolstoy had a profound moral crisis and spiritual awakening in the 1870's which he outlined in his work, A Confession. His literal interpretation of the ethical teachings of Jesus, centering on the Sermon on the Mount, caused him to become a fervent Christian anarchist and pacifist. His ideas of nonviolent resistance which he shared in his works The Kingdom of God is Within You, had a profund impact on figures such as Mohandas Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. On September 23, 1862 Tolstoy married Sophia Andreevna Behrs. She was the daughter of a court physician. They had 13 children, eight of whom survived childhood. Their early married life allowed Tolstoy much freedom to compose War and Peace and Anna Karenina with his wife acting as his secretary and proofreader. The Tolstoy family left Russia in the aftermath of the Russian Revolution and the subsequent establishment of the Soviet Union. Leo Tolstoy's relatives and descendants moved to Sweden, Germany, the United Kingdom, France and the United States. Tolstoy died of pneumonia at Astapovo train station, after a day's rail journey south on November 20, 1910 at the age of 82.
Pat Conroy is the pen name of Donald Patrick Conroy, who was born in Atlanta, Georgia on October 26, 1945. He received a B.A. in English from The Citadel in 1967. After teaching high school at his alma mater, he accepted a job teaching disadvantaged black children in a two-room schoolhouse on Daufuskie Island off the South Carolina coast. Many of the children were illiterate, unable even to write their own names. He taught them using oral history and geography lessons. His experience on Daufuskie Island formed the basis for his first successful memoir, The Water Is Wide, which won the Anisfield-Wolf Award from the Cleveland Foundation and was made into the movie Conrack starring Jon Voight in 1976. His novels include Beach Music and South of Broad. Several of his novels were adapted into movies including The Great Santini, The Lords of Discipline, and The Prince of Tides. He also wrote several works of non-fiction including The Pat Conroy Cookbook: Recipes and Stories of My Life, My Reading Life, and The Death of Santini: The Story of a Father and His Son. He died of pancreatic cancer on March 4, 2016 at the age of 70.
