On a scale from "Serious scholarly effort" to "Take the money and run," this sure looks as if it leans toward "Get it while the getting is good."

All books about popular literature obviously are trying to take advantage of the popularity of the source, but that doesn't mean they can't be good scholarship as well. More than any other twentieth century author, J. R. R. Tolkien seems to have inspired secondary scholarship, much of it very good. The works of Tom Shippey, for instance, not only teach readers about Tolkien, but also about philology and medieval literature and folklore. Still, there is a huge gap between Shippey's The Road to Middle-earth and something like The J. R. R. Tolkien Quizbook. The latter obviously exists solely to cash in.

Robert S. Blackham... seems as if he wanted to be more serious but couldn't figure out how, and went ahead and published anyway. There are a number of hints of this. For example, there is an early chapter "The Tolkien Society." It's not an introduction to the book. It's just a blurb for the Society! Or consider the photographs in this volume. Except for the cover photograph, it appears that not one of them is of J. R. R. Tolkien or any member of his immediate family (parents, wife, children, grandchildren). There are a few of his brother Hilary -- interesting, but hardly relevant to someone interested in Ronald Tolkien. The obvious assumption is that Blackham had no support from the Tolkien family. So Blackham gathered hundreds of photos of places Tolkien visited, or scenes from World War One. Interesting photographs, many of them, but if you want to see the places where Tolkien visited... you could just as well read Humphrey Carpenter's biography and search the web for equivalent photos.

The text... is mostly correct but not really original and not as informative as it could be. It's a brief account of Tolkien's experiences around the time of the First World War, including his time in the trenches. But, apart from some speculations about whether certain places Tolkien visited inspired some places in Middle-earth, it appears that everything Blackham covers can be found, more fully spelled out and better documented, in John Garth's Tolkien and the Great War. A lot of it is also in Scull and Hammond's The J. R. R. Tolkien Companion and Guide: Chronology. If you have those books, you don't need this one, and if you don't have those books, this isn't detailed enough to serve as a replacement. It's really quite simple: If you want to know about Tolkien and the Great War, get Garth's book. If you don't -- if all you want to do is read The Lord of the Rings -- then you need neither Garth nor Blackham. ( )