The Morals of Diet Or The First Step.

Born to an aristocratic Russian family in 1828, Leo Tolstoy is best known for the novels War and Peace and Anna Karenina, often cited as pinnacles of realist fiction. He first achieved literary acclaim in his twenties with his semi-autobiographical trilogy, Childhood, Boyhood, and Youth (1852–1856), and Sevastopol Sketches, based upon his experiences in the Crimean War. In The Morals of Diet, Tolstoy argues that one seriously seeking to lead a good and moral life must consider abstaining from the use of animal food "...because, to say nothing of the excitation of the passions caused by such food, its use is simply immoral, as it involves the performance of an act which is contrary to the moral feeling — killing."