This is a new edition of a book published in 1984 that has long been out of print. So far as I can tell, the only change is a new preface of Joseph Pierce. The republication is due in part to the surge of interest in Middle Earth occasioned by the new movies, and in part due to the interest the publisher, Ignatius Press, has in the book's subject matter.

What Tolkien, Purtill, and Ignatius Press all have in common is their Roman Catholicism, and of particular relevance to this book, a common sense of morality stemming from it. Between the Purtill the critic and Tolkien the author are additional commonalities as well: Purtill, like Tolkien, is an academic who is also an author of fantasy.

Given the commonalities between Purtill and Tolkien, it is therefore not surprising that the critic is entirely sympathetic to the author. In explaining, Purtill also defends. There are a few passages where Purtill makes the defense explicit, citing negative comments by others and then arguing against them. For the most part, however, the defense is implicit, inherent in the explanations he gives. The explicit defenses are not fully satisfactory. In terms of tone they come off as, for lack of a better word, defensive. A deeper problem however is that the explicit defenses by their very nature tend to distort that which they defend - points minor in Tolkien can become major in a defense of Tolkien. These defects make Purtill's explicit defenses sufficiently unsatisfactory that the work would have been improved through their omission.

Where Purtill succeeds and succeeds quite well is when he defends Tolkien implicitly. The strength of his book lies in his explanations of Tolkien's moral views, as well as how myth is used as a means to convey them. When Purtill works directly with Tolkien's published writings and with comments he made about them in his letters, Purtill is at his most interesting and his book most worth the time spent with it.

The main works of Tolkien taken up by Purtill are "Leaf by Niggle", "On Fairy Stories", "The Hobbit", "Lord of the Rings", and "The Silmarillion". The attention paid by Purtill to the first of these, "Leaf by Niggle" will surprise some readers, but it is I think justified by the parallels between the character Niggle and Tolkien; to understand how Tolkien saw Niggle is to a considerable extent to understand how Tolkien saw himself. "On Fairy Stories" is similarly self-referential in that Tolkien is writing about a genre in which he himself works. If "Leaf by Niggle" is about the relationship between Tolkien and his writing, "On Fairy Stories" is about the relationship between Tolkien's writing and the world. Together, these works give the reader a sense of how Tolkien saw his writing and it is through these works that Purtill approaches the others.

Tolkien's chief works, "The Hobbit", "The Lord of the Rings", and "The Silmarillion" share a common world, and are treated by Purtill in an overlapping fashion. Purtill's main goal is to separate and discuss the works' moral themes. In his discussion of how morality is presented in the three works, Purtill applies the approach developed in his discussion of the previous two: the use of a particular world and a particular story to illuminate the universal and unchanging. What is the nature of good? What is the nature of evil? How do good and evil operate in man? It is simply by explaining what Tolkien has to say about these themes that Purtill's literary defense of Tolkien succeeds; it is when he is least concerned with defending him and most concerned with simply explaining him that Purtill defends Tolkien best.

Tolkien employs multiple methods to make his moral points. First, he often simply makes the moral physical - beauty and ugliness representing good and evil. Second, he facets personality; this character receives this facet while another character receives another. Third, he makes moral choices stark. While it is many other things as well, morally Tolkien's work is one of analysis - he breaks up complexity into simpler parts for study. Given this, an analytical reader is doomed to failure because his work has already been done for him - he can't break up Tolkien's characters into simpler parts because they are simple parts already. Morality in Tolkien becomes interesting not when he is read analytically, but when he is read synthetically - when the reader considers not the parts in themselves but in how the parts relate to each other.

Purtill's book benefits its reader in two ways. First, in his explanation of particular moral points that Tolkien makes that many readers may not have caught, but which enrich the experience once understood. Second, and more importantly, Purtill explains how to read Tolkien - Purtill has by no means exhausted the moral complexities of Tolkien's work; he opens the door but ultimately leaves each reader with the pleasure of crossing through and exploring it for himself.

Reprints much of Marquettes own notes and discusses the places he'd traveled as he made his historic journey down the Mississippi and back up thru Illinois to the Chicago Portage. Also covers his later trip back, the rush to get him home before his death and his death in the wilderness.

Hi, my name is Laurence Vanhelsuwe and I am the author of Mastering JavaBeans (Sybex, 1997). I've browsed several Beans books in the bookshops of late and the only one that I liked (apart from my own) was Emily's. Her book is very different from mine, but is much better than most of the others I've seen so far.

This volume on "The Jefferson Memorial" by Joseph Ferry for the American Symbols and their Meanings series is as much a mini-biography about Thomas Jefferson as it is a look at the history of the memorial. Ferry begins with the idea of finding A Fitting Tribute for Jefferson and covers some of the early ideas for doing so when Congress established a Commission to plan, design, and build a memorial. The architect John Russell Pope submitted the deisng, based on the Pantheon of Rome, which Jefferson maintained was the perfect model of a circular building. However, Pope was given the task without the Commission holding a nationwide competition, which would have struck Jefferson as undemocratic, but which we today would recognize as the way politics works in Washington, D.C.

A Notable Career covers the highlights of Jefferson's ear political life while The Politician deals with his two terms as President and afterwards. The Memorial tells some interesting tales of the planning and construction of the Thomas Jefferson Memorial, including how several Japanese women chained themselves to cherry trees that were to be destroyed to make room for the memorial and the statute of Jefferson by Rudolph Evans showed up four years after the monument was dedicated on the 200th anniversary of Jefferson's birth because of metal rationing during World War II. The final chapter looks at the Words of Jefferson, which makes sense since some of his most memorable words, including a quotation from the Declaration of Independence, are carved around the statue in the memorial.

Consequently, young readers of this book will find it is half about Jefferson and half about the Memorial. I was a bit surprised at this balance after reading the volume in this series on the Lincoln Memorial, however if students pay attention they can make the connections between Jefferson's life and some of the specifics of the memorial. The book is illustrated with some of buildings designed by Jefferson, including his home at Monticello, so you can see the influences on the memorial. What there is to know about the Jefferson Memorial is pretty much in this book, such as the fact the statue looks right at the White House (although there is no explanation for the things behind the feet of Jefferson's statute; the last time I visited the memorial the guide was making a point of asking if anybody knew what they might be and I was hoping the answer would pop up in this book).

Other volumes in this series look at other buildings such as the Alamo and the White House as well as symbols like the Bald Eagle, the Liberty Bell, and the Pledge of Allegiance. There are twenty volumes at this point, which means, given the standard class size in elementary schools throughout the land, that teachers could have students work individually or in pairs and account for all of these American symbols for class posters or reports.

Father William Mackey, the subject of the book, was one of the few "white" westerners(a Jesuit priest for that matter) to develop a close affinity with the people of the Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan. The book is a great way to learn about a person who was welcomed and loved by the Bhutanese. A Jesuit priest, Father Mackey was instrumental in introducing western education in Bhutan in the 1960s.He is still remembered affectionately in Bhutan and he touched the life of many a Bhutanese ranging from the royal family to farmers in rural Bhutan. The late Father Mackey, was accorded the highest civilian honor, the medal of the "Heart Son of Bhutan" by the present monarch of Bhutan,His Majesty King Jigme Singye Wangchuck. A legend in Bhutan, there are numerous stories about this missionary who did not prosetylize and was least interested in converting the predominantly Buddhist Bhutanese. The author of the book had the good fortune of interviewing Father Mackey extensively. A great story of a good man.

While on a small passenger ship sailing from Cyprus to Haifa this summer I met Murray Greenfield. He spoke to my youth group about his participation in the aliya bet. When I returned home I ordered his book from amazon.com but when it arrived I discovered that I had been sent the Hebrew version. Nowhere did the order form have a place to specify language.

If you are a baseball fan, then this compilation as put together by the N.Y. Daily News is a must have.The depth of their files, as shown in this book, comes through to allow those fans of Joe D. to relive both the good and not so good times of a grand career. With his passing, a certain style and grace was lost to us all. This book will go a long way in helping us remember it.

Well portrayed view of America's obsession with a phantom fear. Displays McCarthy for what he really was, and how it affected the United States in the early 1950's.

This is a great book for all ages!

An insight into a complicated man's mind. This book is for historians who are trying to put together their own pictures of John Paul Jones. Most people would find this book dull and for them I would recommend one of the many books written about the founder of the American Navy.