A nicely illustrated and mostly well explained exploration of place in Tolkien's works, and how his ideas were inspired by places he might have known or known of. ( )

I've been meaning to read John Garth's "Tolkien and the Great War" for ages now, but have never gotten around to it, so I picked up this work sort of as a way to ease in to that endeavor. As for this book, it's basically a gazetteer of all the places in real life, and literature, that Tolkien mentally assimilated in his effort to create a mythology that he considered worthy of England, and it's a very cool book; if only for all of Tolkien's own art that went into it. In the end, Garth concludes that Tolkien did better than create a mythos for one land, he created a mythos for all those who would wish to preserve the land, and a certain sort of basic humanity, from the depredations of modernity at its most corrosive. ( )

For me, having only read (and reread) The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit, with a single reading of The Silmarillion many years ago, this is an occasionally fascinating, but often too detailed, book for the general reader of Tolkien.
Beautifully illustrated with photos, paintings, posters and some relevant maps, these eased the tedium of the esoteric references to Tolkien’s lesser known books and poetry. Although there are some very interesting insights into places that inspired The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit, this is a book for the enthusiast of all Tolkien’s work, rather than just his famous ones. ( )