Time for Some Tolstoy!

The Death of Ivan Ilyich is now Available!

Hello friends of Study The Great Books!

I am pleased to announce that the Study The Great Books Annotation Edition of Leo Tolstoy’s The Death of Ivan Ilyich and its corresponding Study Guide are now available to purchase at www.studythegreatbooks.com! We have ordered stock and should begin sending out purchases of this book and study guide within the next two weeks!

What’s it About?

Leo Tolstoy’s name is often synonymous with his weighty books War and Peace and Anna Karenina, which are truly among the greatest novels ever written, but fewer people are familiar with this much shorter, but equally powerful, little book. In Tolstoy’s The Death of Ivan Ilyich he invites readers to walk beside a man who has to face the realization that he is dying and will soon be dead. More importantly, the book helps the reader to ponder that death is an inevitable reality coming for all of us who are now living and it raises some critical questions like, “Am I living my life as I ought to live it?” and “What should I most value in this life during the few short years I am given to live it?” The wrong time to first think about these things is when your life is nearly over. The best time to think about these things is right now. This life-changing book will help us to think about your life in light of your death. Memento Mori.

A Personal Note

I am always excited when a new book and/or guide becomes available through STGB, but this one stands out to me as something particularly special. I have mentioned before on Substack that this particular little book had a profound impact on my own life. If you’d like to read about that you can do so by checking out the article How Ivan’s Death Gave Me Life. In short, this book converted me from being a person who thought “fiction is a waste of time” into a real believer in the power of fiction to communicate profound truths.

Study The Great Books is pleased to present The Death of Ivan Ilyich as one of our unique STGB Annotation Editions! Every book worth reading is also worth adding your own thoughts to and marking up according to the STGB Annotation System. Unfortunately it’s often the case that we have more worthwhile thoughts about what we are reading than we have room to write about them in the margins! With our new STGB Annotation Editions we are helping to eliminate that problem. You can now read the Great Books with ample room to write your thoughts, note your observations, and record your own questions about the text.

Other Great Books and Study Guides Currently Available

Thanks for your support of Study The Great Books! Let’s keep reading and growing together!

Soli Deo Gloria,

Jacob Allee