This is the third full-length biography of Tolkien, after Humphrey Carpenter's and Daniel Grotta's. Carpenter's is accurate, well-written, and insightful. Grotta's is none of these, and White's reminds me much of Grotta's. The writing is abysmally clunky, and the text is riddled with completely amateur factual errors on every level, from confusing Dorothy Sayers with Dorothy Parker to inflating Tolkien's discomfort with Charles Williams's work into a seething personal hatred for which there is no contemporary evidence: rather the opposite. White's task, as the title suggests, was to analyze Tolkien's work as well as to recount his life, but there is no literary criticism as such in this book. White starts off his analysis badly by declaring that "the published letters relate almost nothing of his private life," which could only be thought true by someone disappointed at not finding the "personal demons" and "inner drives" (his words) that he thinks Tolkien ought to have. Accordingly, he supplies them. For instance, White reduces Tolkien's motivation for writing his mythology into a simple Freudian longing for his lost mother, and then adds insult to injury by claiming that this oversimplification takes nothing away from Tolkien's achievement. White shows no understanding of what made Tolkien tick, and replaces him with a textbook psychological construct.
Parts of the book are not this bad. White is less digressive than Grotta, and he shows at least a minimal knowledge of Tolkien's posthumously-published works. He concludes with a rousing defense of the value of Tolkien's work, but doesn't really engage with the criticisms. Against elitists who half-believe that popularity is a sign of worthlessness, it's no reply to emphasize Tolkien's popularity.
At one point White criticizes Tolkien for objecting to errors in a publisher's blurb. Tolkien didn't understand the publisher's publicity needs, White says. But no publisher needs to be factually inaccurate, and neither do Tolkien's biographers. This book is likely to be a source of factual and interpretive error for years to come. It adds nothing useful to Carpenter's biography, the one book all persons curious about Tolkien's life should read.

Michael White's new biography of J.R.R. Tolkien is a competently written book and people who are just now discovering Tolkien and his works will most certainly find his book most useful. BUT everyone who has read e.g. Humphrey Carpenter's landmark biography from the late 70s or the ground-breaking studies of Tom Shippey will find nothing new in it. Unfortunately, White only uses second-hand sources and has no new conclusions to offer. Moreover, his book is flawed by some truly sloppy research mistakes, such as calling Dorothy Sayers an "American" and making the Habsburgs the rulers of the "Prussian Empire" (he is clearly confusing Germany with its neighbor Austria-Hungary).
Carpenter's biography although some 25 years older is the far more substantial biography, and although White introduces more historical background material than Carpenter, his background explanations (e.g. about the First World War) are never above schoolbook level. Recommend only for Tolkien newcomers.

After seeing the movie "Lord of the Rings" I wanted to find out more aboout the man who had authored such an ambitious work of fiction. I remember for years hearing that the writing and the story were so spectacular that it was impossible to translate to the screen. I found Mr. Tolkien to be a very interesting subject and would recommend this book.

I bought this book with the hope of reading how top contemporary Protestant scholars address the issue of ecclesiology espoused by Rome and the Orthodox. It left me sadly disappointed. The chapter that addresses the four marks of the church defined in the nicene creed did not attempt to reconcile Protestant perceptions of those terms with the historical understanding of the council fathers. None dealt substantially with Eph 5:32. I was further saddened that one author criticized the piety of Catholics on the basis of his understanding rather than taking the time to just ask some of them why they were doing it. All guns trained against Catholicism while the Eastern Orthodox hold nearly identical views on ecclesiology. Perhaps someday a book with less rhetoric and polemic will attempt to address issues that build understanding rather than polarizing divisiveness.

I read this book, which was written in the first half of the 20th century, in an attempt to find out more about Appalachian history and society. It does contain overviews of topography and early settlement that are somewhat useful. But Campbell, although he clearly tries not to be condescending, doesn't succeed. He's a missionary, and his purpose is to bring "modern civilization" to an underprivileged region. In discussing how he wants to do this, he never really comes to grips with the unique cultural heritage of the people he's talking about and the ways in which modernization -- his version of which is a sort of clean-cut, upright, Protestant Capitalist dystopia -- would endanger that. I can't really see any reason why a modern scholar would want to read this book.

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Ugh. What a turkey. There's nothing worth having here: The rotes are uninteresting and uninspiring, the information on Mage-ly Seattle is silly and unbalanced and that leaves the information on the "signature characters" used in the examples in the rule books. Surely there's a better way to spend your money.

I have been waiting since July 5 for you to send me this book.
I'll be glad to review it if you ever send it !!

This book was absolutely terrible. I purchased it with high hopes, but instead I threw it away. I couldn't have the heart to sell it used to someone else, because one person should only get burned buying this book.