Black History 365

Most of the Tolstoys abandoned their ancestral homeland shortly after the Revolution. Among them were the parents of Nikolai Tolstoy, an author born in England in 1935; he continues to live and write there today. In ''The Tolstoys'' he tells the fascinating and complicated story of his family's glorious and bloody past and, for the most part, he tells it with authority, grace and good humor. The reader will find no startling new revelations on the career or personality of the great writer Leo Tolstoy. It is his less-known but no less colorful relatives who occupy the center of attention.

I really enjoyed reading "Black Diamonds: The Rise and Fall of An English Dynasty" by Catherine Bailey. The 451 page nonfiction book described the rise and fall of the Fitzwilliam family who built the 365 room mansion, Wentworth Woodhouse and lived in it for a couple hundred years. It describes the daily lives of the family as well as the many servants who worked in and around the house, the villagers that lived in nearby Wentworth village and the miners who worked in the coal mines owned by the Fitzwilliam family.