What Shall We Do?: Free Audiobook and Listening Guide

What Shall We Do?, credited to Leo Tolstoy, is available as a LibriVox volunteer audiobook. This guide identifies the recording, its source summary and its audio tracks.

About the work

The LibriVox catalogue summary, preserved with the recording, reads:

LibriVox recording of What Shall We Do? by Leo Tolstoy. (Translated by Vladimir Chertkov.) Read in English by Joanna Michal Hoyt. A vivid description of wealth and poverty in Russia in Tolstoy's day, an inquiry into the root causes of economic inequality, and a vision of a more just way of living. Tolstoy recounts his own disturbing encounters with extreme poverty in Moscow, his initial idea of making the problem disappear by generous financial contributions, and his subsequent realization that the problem of poverty was much more intractable than he had imagined. He concludes that poverty is fundamentally linked with the luxurious lifestyle to which he and his class were accustomed, and that both are detrimental both to the rich and to the poor. He goes on to investigate the roots of power imbalances, both in the state and in markets, and to make suggestions for a fundamental social and economic reform in the interest of justice and well-being. Both his social critique and his proposed reforms are grounded in a deeply held and somewhat unorthodox religious faith, as well as in a vigorously applied but somewhat unconventional view of science. Unfortunately he also expresses some views on the role and duties of women and the use of birth control which some readers may find offensive. This material is mostly contained in Chapter 40, the last chapter. (Summary by Joanna Michal Hoyt)

Recording facts

• Recording title: What Shall We Do?
• Author credits: Leo Tolstoy
• Language: English
• Original MP3 tracks: 41
• Combined MP3 track duration: 11:00:17

Catalogue topics

• poverty
• ethics
• economic justice

Opening tracks: first 24 of 41

1. 00 - Epigraph — 2:59
2. 01 - Chapter I — 8:35
3. 02 - Chapter II — 14:28
4. 03 - Chapter III — 13:30
5. 04 - Chapter IV — 6:36
6. 05 - Chapter V — 9:05
7. 06 - Chapter VI — 7:02
8. 07 - Chapter VII — 6:32
9. 08 - Chapter VIII — 12:42
10. 09 - Chapter IX — 6:05
11. 10 - Chapter X — 12:05
12. 11 - Chapter XI — 6:51
13. 12 - Chapter XII — 9:36
14. 13 - Chapter XIII — 16:13
15. 14 - Chapter XIV — 14:12
16. 15 - Chapter XV — 13:55
17. 16 - Chapter XVI — 11:12
18. 17 - Chapter XVII — 21:03
19. 18 - Chapter XVIII — 30:08
20. 19 - Chapter XIX — 14:04
21. 20 - Chapter XX — 28:32
22. 21 - Chapter XXI — 36:38
23. 22 - Chapter XXII — 11:41
24. 23 - Chapter XXIII — 8:03

Listen to this recording

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Source and rights

This is a record from LibriVox's official Internet Archive collection, with a public-domain licence recorded in its metadata. LibriVox's policy includes its catalogue summaries as well as its recordings. Its public-domain assessment follows United States law; copyright status can differ elsewhere. The summary and track facts are reproduced and reformatted from that record. Dates attached to the archive upload are not treated as original book publication dates.