Rating: 
Summary: A scholarly study--- not for the casual fan.
Review: This considered study of Tolkien's wartime experiences fills a void that Humphrey Carpenter's biography (an excellant book) only hinted existed. Garth writes with a scholarship and maturity that is lacking in the avalanche of Tolkien-related "literature" glutting the market (on the coat tails of Peter Jackson's reverential, if not wholly faithful, movie trilogy), most of which can be disregarded as inconsequential college senior thesis-work and redundant. This book increases our understanding of the man and his creation in a profound and original way. Tolkien and the Great War is an important work of literary scholarship that will endure.
Rating: 
Summary: Escape to Middle-earth
Review: This is a book for Tolkien specialists, combining a partial biography of the writer with highly academic literary criticism. Tolkien experienced combat and suffering directly when serving in World War I, while two of his closest friends and many of his acquaintances died on the Western Front. In this book Garth ties the writer's wartime experiences to his later mythology, with a high degree of believability. Things get off to a rather slow start as Garth describes Tolkien's teen years and the close circle of schoolmates (in a literary fraternity called TCBS) who would encourage his writing. The influence of friends is surely unmistakable, but Garth takes the cheeky intellectual snobbery of the fraternity way too seriously, slowing down the early parts of this book. We then continue into Tolkien's war years, and then the biographical portion of the book ends when he was discharged in 1918 at just the age of 26, at which point he had only published a few poems.
Garth then shifts into a fascinating study of the often surprising and unexpected influence of the war on Tolkien's vast Middle-earth mythology. Note that Garth sticks mostly with Tolkien's earlier works, The Book of Lost Tales and The Silmarillion, while only brushing upon the later but more famous The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. The point is that in the earlier works Tolkien was still constructing his literary worlds rather than expanding and perfecting them, and that was when his war experience loomed the largest. Tolkien experts are probably going to disagree with some of the details in Garth's literary analysis. But his larger point can't be denied. Tolkien's universe of mythological creatures and heroic epics was far from mere escapism, which is a frequent inaccurate criticism. Instead, Tolkien was making crucial points about war, friendship, industrialization, and tyranny, in the guise of some of the most epic literary creations the world has ever seen. [~doomsdayer520~]
Rating:
Summary: Excellent - A new classic
Review: This is a wonderful book for those who want to look beyond the Lord of the Rings and see the giant of a man who stands there. This excellently researched book gives a look into Tolkien's war experience and provides a lot of insight into the environment which spawned his mythology. I appreciated that the book doesn't state definitively what Tolkien's thoughts or motivations were, it just presents what his personal environment is during the time of writing. I place this on the level with or above Carpenter's biography. I think, in time, this book will be regarded as a key work about the late author.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent - A new classic
Review: This is a wonderful book for those who want to look beyond the Lord of the Rings and see the giant of a man who stands there. This excellently researched book gives a look into Tolkien's war experience and provides a lot of insight into the environment which spawned his mythology. I appreciated that the book doesn't state definitively what Tolkien's thoughts or motivations were, it just presents what his personal environment is during the time of writing. I place this on the level with or above Carpenter's biography. I think, in time, this book will be regarded as a key work about the late author.
Rating: 
Summary: Dry scholarly tome
Review: This well documented history will be of benefit to those seeking information on the roots of Tolkien's stories: i.e. the influences of his young friends, and how the horror of war changed his approach to "fairy stories".Numerous quotes from Tolkien's letters, essays, and poems are the best part of the book, and the preface and last chapter nicely summarizes how these stories evolved. However, for the average reader, this is a dry unreadable book.
I would recommend it for those who wish a deeper knowledge of Tolkien's early life, or for those who are used to browsing a book for the best parts. But the National Geographic films on Tolkien would be a better source for those less willing or able to digest this dry, scholarly tome.
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