Description:
Winner of the Tolkien Society Award for Best Book
A leading scholar draws on fifty years of reading and studying J.R.R. Tolkien to explain how he created an entire world.
Brief description: Michael D.C. Drout is a professor of English and director of the Center for the Study of the Medieval at Wheaton College. He specializes in Anglo-Saxon and medieval literature, science fiction and fantasy, especially the works of J.R.R. Tolkien and Ursula K. Le Guin, and is the author of How Tradition Works and Drout's Quick and Easy Old English, among others. He lives in Dedham, Massachusetts.
Review Quotes: Mr. Drout is a fine scholar but his work sings because of its emotional depth... The Tower and the Ruin is thus, in a sense, only incidentally about Tolkien's creations. At its most compelling it's about how meaningful reading can be and how deeply it can convey a father's love for his children.--Konstantin Kakaes "Wall Street Journal"