I thought from the title that this book told the story of my less than illustrious birth, but silly me, it's actually a philosophy book. By way of perhaps egging you on to crack this book, I would say it's actually a pretty decent one, and the author discusses the ideas of writers as diverse as Teilhard de Chardin, Paul Tillich, C.G. Jung, Jesus, Carlos Castaneda, and Jean Piaget to show how we may envision a different existence for ourselves and a different future for the human race.

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.

When a religion book tries to be a science book, the result is torturous for thinking readers. This book is that. I happen to agree that we have multiple intelligences. Ms. DeBeauport does not pretend that any of them are unnecessary, yet she plays footloose with the rational intelligence when she traipses over logic and integrity. (In this I regard her book as common.) Her deductive reasoning is wonderful to follow in the introduction. To paraphrase, "I started with research, and I wanted to support my findings, and I found the usual rationalistic paradigm would not render them indisputable. So, I looked to the new physics and a lot of what follows is perceptible along non-rational pathways." Sounds a lot like medieval deductive reasoning to me--just a different axe to grind. The scholastics would feel right at home with this book.

In Three Faces of Mind Elaine De Beauport has beautifully combined research, years of observation and her own experiences to expand current theories on intelligence. She has taken the three parts of the physical brain and attributed to them 10 separate types of intelligence. Each type has its own chapter combining exercises and insight. Excellent!!!!