Applebee's is an American company that develops, franchises, and operates the Applebee's Neighborhood Grill + Bar restaurant chain. The Applebee's concept focuses on casual dining, with mainstream American dishes such as salads, chicken, pasta, burgers, and "riblets" (which is considered Applebee's signature dish). All Applebee's restaurants feature a bar area and serve alcoholic beverages.
History
1980–2006: Founding and going public

The Applebee's chain, was founded by Bill and T. J. Palmer in 1980. The vision that they wanted was "to create a restaurant that had a neighborhood pub feel to it and could offer friendly service along with quality fare at a lower price than most of their competition." The name they thought of to suit their concept was Appleby, but found that it had already been registered.[5] They also considered "Cinnamon's" and "Pepper's" before arriving at Applebee's.[6] They opened their first location in Decatur, Georgia, at the time named T.J. Applebee's Rx for Edibles & Elixirs. They opened a second location outside of Atlanta, Georgia a few years later, and sold the company to W. R. Grace and Company in 1983.[7] As part of the transaction, Bill Palmer was named president of the Applebee's Division, an indirect subsidiary of W. R. Grace and Company. In that capacity, Palmer guided the operation from its entrepreneurial beginnings to a full-fledged franchise system. He became an Applebee's franchisee in 1985. Bill Palmer died in 2020.

In 1986, the name of the concept was changed to Applebee's Neighborhood Grill & Bar.[8] In 1988, Applebee's International, Inc., became the restaurant chain's franchiser when Kansas City franchisees Abe Gustin and John Hamra purchased the rights to the Applebee's concept from W. R. Grace.[9] In 1989, Applebee's opened their 100th restaurant in Nashville, Tennessee.[10]

In the 1990s Applebee's became one of the largest sit-down restaurant chains in the United States,[11] and began trading publicly in November 1991.[12] In 1998, Applebee's opened its 1000th restaurant.
2007–present: Acquisition by IHOP
Former headquarters in Lenexa, Kansas (now called Restaurant Support Center)

On July 16, 2007, IHOP Corp. announced that it agreed to buy Applebee's International for about $2.1 billion. Applebee's shareholders would receive $25.50 in cash per share, representing a 4.6% premium to the closing price on July 13, 2007.[13]

On November 29, 2007, IHOP (now DineEquity) announced that it had completed a $2 billion purchase of the Applebee's chain.[13][14] After the acquisition, IHOP Corp. changed its name to DineEquity, Inc.[15] With their merger in November 2007, Applebee's and IHOP combined to make the largest full-service restaurant company in the world, with more than 3,250 locations.[14][16]

On September 3, 2015, it was announced that their parent company, DineEquity, would be consolidating its headquarters for Applebee's and IHOP to DineEquity's Glendale, California, location.[17]

On August 11, 2017, DineEquity announced that Applebee's would close between 105 and 135 locations by the end of the year. Same-store sales decreased 7% in the previous quarter.[18][19] As of December 31, 2019, there were 1,787 restaurants operating system-wide in the United States and 15 other countries, including 69 that are company owned and 1,718 that are franchised.[1] Advertising
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This section needs to be updated. Please help update this article to reflect recent events or newly available information. (September 2016)

As part of the company's marketing campaign and slogan, Wanda Sykes was hired to voice the chain's new mascot, the Applebee's Apple.[20] The character appears in commercials touting Applebee's various specials and stating the new slogan "Together is good" or saying "Get it together, baby!" as the slogan appears at the bottom right of the screen. A new campaign started on February 25, 2008, without Sykes' character (the spokesapple), with the slogan "It's a whole new neighborhood." The commercials used both the original and new logos.[citation needed] In 2009 Applebee's changed its slogan again to "There's no place like the neighborhood."

From 2012 to 2016 Applebee's aired an advertising campaign focusing on fresh ingredients and new dishes, narrated by Jason Sudeikis, featuring the slogan "See you tomorrow."[21]

In late September 2017 Applebee's brought back its most famous slogan from the early-to-mid 2000s, "Eatin' Good in the Neighborhood." They also engaged in an alcohol–based advertising campaign to attract new customers by having a "drink of the month" at a reduced price.[22] In 2019, Applebee's advertising fees accounted for 165.5 million U.S. dollars.

In October 2017 Applebee's added the 'Dollarita' to their menu, which Steve Joyce, CEO of parent company Dine Brands, has claimed to be a major change for Applebee's. “Dollarita turned everything around," he said. "It was a 13-point swing between September and October in Applebee’s performance.” After introducing the dollar drink deal Applebee's has had four consecutive quarters of growth after struggling to grow sales.[23]
Controversies
Side-work compensation

Since 2006, Applebee's and its servers have been engaged in a lawsuit over hourly wages. The servers, who received a federal minimum wage of $2.13 per hour as tipped employees, allege that the company requires them to spend 20% of their time doing non-serving labor, for which they should be paid the federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour. The case has gone through several stages, including a judicially mandated binding arbitration session.[24][25]

In September 2012, a judge in Illinois ruled in favor of the Applebee's employees and will evaluate damages at a later date.[26]

This article is about the novel by Leo Tolstoy. For other uses, see War and Peace (disambiguation).
War and Peace Tolstoy - War and Peace - first edition, 1869.jpg
Front page of War and Peace, first edition, 1869 (Russian)
Author Leo Tolstoy
Original title Война и миръ
Translator The first translation of War and Peace into English was by American Nathan Haskell Dole, in 1899
Country Russia
Language Russian, with some French and German
Genre Novel (Historical novel)
Publisher The Russian Messenger (serial)
Publication date
Serialised 1865–1867; book 1869
Media type Print
Pages 1,225 (first published edition)
Followed by The Decembrists (Abandoned and Unfinished)
Original text
Война и миръ at Russian Wikisource
Translation War and Peace at Wikisource

War and Peace (Russian: Война и мир, romanized: Voyna i mir; pre-reform Russian: Война и миръ; [vɐjˈna i ˈmʲir]) is a literary work mixed with chapters on history and philosophy by the Russian author Leo Tolstoy, first published serially, then published in its entirety in 1869. It is regarded as one of Tolstoy's finest literary achievements and remains an internationally praised classic of world literature.[1][2][3]

The novel chronicles the French invasion of Russia and the impact of the Napoleonic era on Tsarist society through the stories of five Russian aristocratic families. Portions of an earlier version, titled The Year 1805,[4] were serialized in The Russian Messenger from 1865 to 1867 before the novel was published in its entirety in 1869.[5]

Tolstoy said War and Peace is "not a novel, even less is it a poem, and still less a historical chronicle." Large sections, especially the later chapters, are philosophical discussions rather than narrative.[6] The writer rewrote the novel several times.[7] Tolstoy also said that the best Russian literature does not conform to standards and hence hesitated to call War and Peace a novel. Instead, he regarded Anna Karenina as his first true novel.
Contents

1 Composition history
2 Realism
3 Language
4 Background and historical context
5 Principal characters
6 Plot summary
6.1 Book One
6.2 Book Two
6.3 Book Three
6.4 Book Four
6.5 Epilogue in two parts
6.5.1 First part
6.5.2 Second part
7 Reception
8 English translations
8.1 List of English translations
8.2 Comparing translations
9 Adaptations
9.1 Film
9.2 Television
9.3 Music
9.4 Opera
9.5 Theatre
9.6 Radio
10 See also
11 References
12 External links

Composition history
Only known color photograph of the author, Leo Tolstoy, taken at his Yasnaya Polyana estate in 1908 (age 79) by Sergey Prokudin-Gorsky.
Tolstoy's notes from the ninth draft of War and Peace, 1864.

Tolstoy began writing War and Peace in 1863, the year that he finally married and settled down at his country estate. In September of that year, he wrote to Elizabeth Bers, his sister-in-law, asking if she could find any chronicles, diaries or records that related to the Napoleonic period in Russia. He was dismayed to find that few written records covered the domestic aspects of Russian life at that time, and tried to rectify these omissions in his early drafts of the novel.[8] The first half of the book was written and named "1805". During the writing of the second half, he read widely and acknowledged Schopenhauer as one of his main inspirations. Tolstoy wrote in a letter to Afanasy Fet that what he had written in War and Peace is also said by Schopenhauer in The World as Will and Representation. However, Tolstoy approaches "it from the other side."[9]

The first draft of the novel was completed in 1863. In 1865, the periodical Russkiy Vestnik (The Russian Messenger) published the first part of this draft under the title 1805 and published more the following year. Tolstoy was dissatisfied with this version, although he allowed several parts of it to be published with a different ending in 1867. He heavily rewrote the entire novel between 1866 and 1869.[5][10] Tolstoy's wife, Sophia Tolstaya, copied as many as seven separate complete manuscripts before Tolstoy considered it ready for publication.[10] The version that was published in Russkiy Vestnik had a very different ending from the version eventually published under the title War and Peace in 1869. Russians who had read the serialized version were eager to buy the complete novel, and it sold out almost immediately. The novel was immediately translated after publication into many other languages.[citation needed]

It is unknown why Tolstoy changed the name to War and Peace. He may have borrowed the title from the 1861 work of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon: La Guerre et la Paix ("War and Peace" in French).[4] The title may also be another reference to Titus, described as being a master of "war and peace" in The Twelve Caesars, written by Suetonius in 119. The completed novel was then called Voyna i mir (Война и мир in new-style orthography; in English War and Peace).[citation needed]

The 1805 manuscript was re-edited and annotated in Russia in 1893 and has been since translated into English, German, French, Spanish, Dutch, Swedish, Finnish, Albanian, Korean, and Czech.

Tolstoy was instrumental in bringing a new kind of consciousness to the novel. His narrative structure is noted not only for its god's eye point of view over and within events, but also in the way it swiftly and seamlessly portrayed an individual character's view point. His use of visual detail is often comparable to cinema, using literary techniques that resemble panning, wide shots and close-ups. These devices, while not exclusive to Tolstoy, are part of the new style of the novel that arose in the mid-19th century and of which Tolstoy proved himself a master.[11]

The standard Russian text of War and Peace is divided into four books (comprising fifteen parts) and an epilogue in two parts. Roughly the first half is concerned strictly with the fictional characters, whereas the latter parts, as well as the second part of the epilogue, increasingly consist of essays about the nature of war, power, history, and historiography. Tolstoy interspersed these essays into the story in a way that defies previous fictional convention. Certain abridged versions remove these essays entirely, while others, published even during Tolstoy's life, simply moved these essays into an appendix.[12]
Realism

The novel is set 60 years before Tolstoy's day, but he had spoken with people who lived through the 1812 French invasion of Russia. He read all the standard histories available in Russian and French about the Napoleonic Wars and had read letters, journals, autobiographies and biographies of Napoleon and other key players of that era. There are approximately 160 real persons named or referred to in War and Peace.[13]

He worked from primary source materials (interviews and other documents), as well as from history books, philosophy texts and other historical novels.[10] Tolstoy also used a great deal of his own experience in the Crimean War to bring vivid detail and first-hand accounts of how the Imperial Russian Army was structured.[14]

Tolstoy was critical of standard history, especially military history, in War and Peace. He explains at the start of the novel's third volume his own views on how history ought to be written.
Language
Cover of War and Peace, Italian translation, 1899.

Although the book is mainly in Russian, significant portions of dialogue are in French. It has been suggested[15] that the use of French is a deliberate literary device, to portray artifice while Russian emerges as a language of sincerity, honesty, and seriousness. It could, however, also simply represent another element of the realistic style in which the book is