SOURCE: “Sharp Eyes for the Multiple Things,” in The New York Times, February 14, 1954, p. 4.

In the following review of The Hedgehog and the Fox, Barrett praises Berlin's interpretation of the digressions on history which punctuate Tolstoy's War and Peace.

Most of us, I imagine, reading War and Peace tend to skim over the long disquisitions on history as rather tedious breaks in a marvelously exciting story, and nearly all critics hitherto have given official sanction to this habit by attempting to prove that these historical essays are an unnecessary blemish upon a great work of art. However, Isaiah Berlin—lecturer in philosophy at Oxford and famous as a scholar, diplomatist and conversationalist in at least two continents—has chosen to subject these historical passages to careful attention. In this brilliant essay [The Hedgehog and the Fox] he not only succeeds in making very good sense out of Tolstoy's...