The Tower and the Ruin

J.R.R. Tolkien's Creation

By: Michael D. C. Drout

Narrated by: Michael D. C. Drout

A leading scholar draws on fifty years of reading and studying J.R.R. Tolkien to explain how he created an entire world.

No writer has surpassed the epic achievement of J.R.R. Tolkien, who spent decades refining his Middle-earth—a world that has felt so real to so many readers that it is almost impossible to imagine that any single person could have simply created it, seemingly out of thin air. In The Tower and the Ruin, Michael D. C. Drout takes us deep into Tolkien’s genius, allowing us to glimpse the making of not only The Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit, and The Silmarillion but also lesser-known books such as The Fall of Gondolin as well as Tolkien’s poetry and innovative scholarship.

Drout, who has spent decades reading, studying, and teaching Tolkien, allows us to understand the author’s methods and to embrace his works as never before. With great erudition and sparkling prose, Drout shows us how Tolkien invented myths, legends, cultures, languages, histories, and an intricate, multivocal narrative. We come to understand how Tolkien drew upon and modified material he found in Beowulf, the Kalevala, and other medieval literature from northern Europe, using the subtle qualities of those famous works as inspiration for his own. We also see the process by which he created the complex form of sorrow that is the primary emotional effect of his mature works, a sadness “blessed without bitterness,” carefully woven through a tapestry of themes that has resonated with generations of readers.

Sweeping and hugely perceptive—and enhanced throughout by Drout’s personal reflections on how Tolkien has shaped his own life and relationships—The Tower and the Ruin illuminates Tolkien anew and will come to be seen as an essential work for anyone who has journeyed to Middle-earth.

"A splendid and original combination of sharp analysis and deeply felt emotional memoir. We know what makes Tolkien’s fiction good, but what makes it qualitatively different, so that it feels like entering a world, not just reading another book? And what makes it such an effective resource for those experiencing grief and loss? Michael D. C. Drout answers both questions, powerfully, personally, convincingly. He shows how, more than any other work, The Lord of the Rings is not just a story. It’s a life-changer."—Tom Shippey, author of The Road to Middle-earth

©2025 Michael Drout (P)2025 Recorded Books

The best professor on Audible gift us a magnum opus

I’ve been a student of professor Drout for nearly 15 years, since I first listened to his rhetoric course A Way With Words. This latest work is amazing.

Tolkien scholarship at its finest

I have been waiting for *years* for this book to finally come out, and I am happy to say that it did not disappoint. Drout is a phenomenal scholar, and it is on full display in this work. Also, I didn’t realize until I saw that he was the narrator, that I had simply been assuming he would be. It made the experience that much more pleasurable.

Not to be missed for lovers of Tolkien’s work.

It was profound Incisive and personal to the author in a way that made it not limited.but universal.

Awesome book!

It’s insightful, thought-provoking, and well written. I’ve read some of Michael Drout’s other books, and this might be the best yet.