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A Summary and Analysis of J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

The Hobbit is one of the biggest-selling books of all time. An estimated 100 million people have read Tolkien’s classic children’s novel since it was first published in 1937. The story of its origins, and Tolkien’s supposed invention of the word ‘hobbit’ (of which more below), are well-known. But how should we ‘read’ The Hobbit ? What does the story mean?

Before we offer a textual analysis of Tolkien’s novel, it might be worth briefly summarising the plot.

The Hobbit : plot summary

Bilbo Baggins is a hobbit (a species of small creature which Tolkien invented) who lives in Bag End, in the rural loveliness of The Shire. The wizard Gandalf turns up one day, accompanied by thirteen dwarves, who are on a mission to reclaim their gold, as well as their kingdom, from beneath the Lonely Mountain. This land, which was once theirs, has been taken over by a fearsome dragon named Smaug.

Bilbo has been approached because they need a burglar: someone to break into Smaug’s cave so they can go in and defeat the dragon and recover their gold. Bilbo reluctantly agrees to accompany them. However, the leader of the dwarves, Thorin Oakenshield, is even more reluctantly than Bilbo to have the hobbit come along with them, because Bilbo is not a fighter as the dwarves are. However, the others persuade him, and they all set off together.

They travel to Rivendell, the home of the Elves, where Elrond gives them help with their map. But the gang are then caught by goblins while attempting to cross the Misty Mountains, and Gandalf has to rescue them. Bilbo, however, gets lost deep in the underground tunnels, and encounters Gollum, a mysterious creature whose magic ring Bilbo accidentally acquires.

The ring confers invisibility upon whoever wears it, and – to escape Gollum, having played a game of riddles with him – Bilbo uses the ring and finds his way out of the tunnels. He rejoins the dwarves and they once again have to flee the pursuing goblins. They are assisted by eagles and find their way safely to the house of Beorn, who can transform into a fearsome bear.

In the enchanted forest of Mirkwood, Bilbo uses his sword, Sting, to fight off giant spiders which attack them and ensnare the dwarves in webs. Nearing their destination, the gang are helped by the inhabitants of nearby Laketown, who want Smaug defeated as much as they do. Entering the mountain via a secret door, Bilbo finds Smaug’s lair and identifies a weakness in the dragon’s armour.

When Smaug notices him, he flies into a rage, realising that Laketown has helped Bilbo to find his cave; the dragon flies off to burn Laketown to the ground. Thanks to a thrush overhearing Bilbo’s account of Smaug’s weakness, and then flying to the town to tell them, a man named Bard is able to find Smaug’s weak spot and shoot and kill the dragon with an arrow, halting the destruction.

The dwarves are now able to regain their mountain, and Bilbo finds the Arkenstone, a stone precious to Thorin’s family. But he hides it rather than handing it over to Thorin. When the men of Laketown demand a cut of Smaug’s treasure to help repair their town, Thorin refuses, drawing on the surrounding armies of dwarves to defend his position.

Bilbo attempts to intercede, using the Arkenstone to bribe the Laketowners, but when Thorin finds out he sends Bilbo away, angered at having been betrayed by the hobbit.

With the help of the eagles and Beorn, the dwarves win the Battle of Five Armies. However, in the battle Thorin is mortally wounded. Before he dies, he forgives Bilbo. Bilbo returns home to his hobbit-hole, with a small cut of the treasure.

The Hobbit : analysis

We should, according to Tolkien, resist the urge to analyse The Hobbit as an allegory of any kind. Tolkien disliked allegory, and for this reason he wasn’t keen on his friend C. S. Lewis’s Narnia books (although Lewis denied that these were allegory, too).

In his preface to the second edition of the vast sequel to The Hobbit , The Lord of the Rings , Tolkien wrote that many people confuse ‘applicability’ with ‘allegory’, and this distinction is worth pondering. ‘Applicability’, to use Tolkien’s phrase, gives the reader freedom in how they interpret and analyse the story, whereas ‘allegory’ involves a very top-down ‘you should read X here as representing Y’ instruction from the author.

So if we read one of the most famous allegories in twentieth-century literature, George Orwell’s Animal Farm (which appeared just eight years after The Hobbit : we have analysed Orwell’s book here ), as simply a tale about animals and their relationships with their human masters, we are missing something vital from the story.

With The Hobbit , we may detect possible meanings beneath the leafy Shire, the dragon guarding his gold, the novel’s quest motif, and many other details, but Tolkien refuses to prescribe one meaning that we’re meant to follow.

So it was with the great Anglo-Saxon and Middle-English epics which he admired and wrote about as part of his day job as Professor of Anglo-Saxon at the University of Oxford. Grendel and the dragon in Beowulf may mean any number of things: their meaning is in the eye, and mind’s eye, of the reader or listener.

Of course, it helps with old epic poems like Beowulf and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight that the identity of the author remains unknown to us, so even if they were intended as allegory, we have lost the ‘key’ that supposedly unlocks them.

But even though we know The Hobbit was written by someone who had first-hand experience of war (like many men of his generation, Tolkien had fought in the First World War) as the inevitability of another war was growing even more urgent, we should refuse to draw any clear line between real-world events and the work of imaginative fantasy which Tolkien wrote.

So, if not as allegory, how should we interpret this quest tale for a modern readership, which is clearly indebted to Germanic and Norse myths of the Middle and ‘Dark’ Ages? On a structural level we can be more confident. In his vast and brilliant study of plot structures, The Seven Basic Plots: Why We Tell Stories , Christopher Booker gives us two pointers which we might apply to The Hobbit : Tolkien’s tale is an example of both the ‘quest’ story and the ‘voyage and return’ narrative.

Indeed, Tolkien’s subtitle for The Hobbit , There and Back Again , even spells this out for us. Bilbo is the reluctant hero who must leave home – as in countless fairy tales – and go out on an adventure which will make him a wiser (and certainly richer) person.

In this connection, it’s worth stopping to analyse both the similarities between The Hobbit and many earlier folk tales and myths and the crucial ways in which Tolkien departs from these tropes and conventions. Vladimir Propp, in his influential work on the ‘ morphology of the folk tale ’, identified a number of plot details and character types which we find in various European fairy stories: a hero has to leave home, a hero is challenged to prove his heroic qualities, a hero is tricked by the villain, and so on; ending, of course, with the hero returning home and order being restored to the world.

Identifying many of Propp’s features in Tolkien’s novel helps to explain (or partly explain at least) why The Hobbit has become such a favourite novel among both young and old readers alike. There is something primal and mythic about its plot elements, as well as its local detail (dragons, treasure, giant eight-legged foes, shape-shifting bears, and the rest of it). Tolkien taps into the need for fireside tales told by travelling mythmongers and local bards which seems hard-wired into our brains.

With The Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion it’s clear that Tolkien set out to create a full-blown mythology for England, drawing on its Germanic and Norse heritage, complete with fully developed languages like Elvish (Tolkien’s speciality was philology, or the study of languages). But with The Hobbit he was doing something less ambitious but no less mythic: creating a sort of modern-day fairy story.

And it is those elements of The Hobbit which depart from the traditional folk tale that make the novel something recognisably modern. The hero is not some wet-behind-the-ears youngster who needs to go out and find his way in the world: he is a middle-aged and perfectly settled creature of habit who has his life all sorted and only agrees to leave his comfortable hobbit-hole with the greatest reluctance.

He is not tricked by the villain but turns out to be the arch-trickster himself, outwitting Gollum and winning, for his efforts, the fated magic ring (another well-worn idea even when Tolkien used it: see the Ring of Gyges ) that would become the centrepiece of The Lord of the Rings .

And, of course, Bilbo is knocked unconscious soon after the climactic Battle of the Five Armies begins. Here, perhaps, we might be permitted a smidgen of biographical analysis: Tolkien, having fought in and survived a mass industrial war which afforded little opportunity for old-fashioned heroism, seems to be commenting on the unheroic nature of war and adventure. You’re more likely to be the fellow zonked out on the ground during the battle than you are the warrior wielding the sword and winning the day.

Indeed, even the story’s other main hero, Thorin, doesn’t survive the battle. The Hobbit offers a very cautious and critical account of war, with the costs often outweighing any perceived benefits.

However, this is not to say that Bilbo fails as a ‘hero’: merely that Tolkien is at pains to highlight a quieter, more diplomatic kind of hero whose work goes on behind the scenes (Bilbo’s role as burglar scouting out Smaug’s lair). He tries to prevent the final battle by bargaining with the Laketown residents and Wood-Elves. Thorin is enraged by this, but he ends up paying an even higher price than his family’s precious Arkenstone, giving his own life in the course of the battle.

Contrary to popular belief, the word ‘hobbit’ did exist before The Hobbit . The famous story is that Tolkien, while marking some of his students’ exam papers in Oxford one day, came to a blank sheet which had not a single word written on it. Out of nowhere – or so it seemed – he had a flash of inspiration, and hastily scribbled down the sentence, ‘In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.’

For all that Tolkien’s origin-story offers a delightful ‘Eureka’ moment for the novel’s (and word’s) conception, it should be taken with a pinch of salt. And ultimately, the strength of Tolkien’s novel lies not in its originality but in its superlative assembling of existing tropes and ideas into a story that offers a quiet commentary on the meaning of ‘heroism’ in the modern age.

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By J.R.R. Tolkien

'The Hobbit' is a children’s fantasy novel published in 1937. It is one of the best-known and best-loved novels of the genre.

Article written by Emma Baldwin

B.A. in English, B.F.A. in Fine Art, and B.A. in Art Histories from East Carolina University.

It has been translated into over 50 languages. While it was written with young readers in mind, the novel is read by adults on a regular basis and is often assigned in schools around the world.

The novel tells the story of Bilbo Baggins , a Hobbit, who is enlisted to accompany a group of dwarves on a dangerous quest to retake their home and treasure. He’s given the job of “burglar,” one he and the dwarves all believe he’s unsuited for. But, as the story progresses, and the group faces growing dangers, he slowly starts to find his courage. The group encounter trolls, elves, orcs, goblins, and of course, Smaug the dragon who took up residence in the dwarves’ home and is lording over their treasure.

In The Hobbit , readers, no matter their age, will be confronted with several interesting themes. For the young reader, those of adventure and heroism are going to be the most prominent and interesting. The story of Thorin and his extended family of dwarves seeking to retake their home, The Lonely Mountain, from Smaug, is a thrilling one. The characters, including Bilbo , all show a great amount of courage and heroism in the face of the dangers they come into contact with.

There are the thrills of Smaug’s danger to enjoy, the terrifying threat the wargs, orcs, and goblins pose, and more. Just when it seems like one adventure is over and the characters are going to get a break, something else happens and suddenly Bilbo and the dwarves are fighting for their lives again. It’s likely that a young reader, no matter what they’re interested in, is going to find something in this novel that excites them. It might be the Battle of the Five Armies, Smaug, the wood elves, or the broader excitement of the quest.

Bilbo Baggins as a Hero in The Hobbit

By the time the novel ends, Bilbo has demonstrated a great deal of bravery and heroism. But, he doesn’t start out as a hero. He’s a normal hobbit who loves his home, good food and drink. When he’s thrust into the middle of this quest he’s a reluctant hero, someone who has to gather their courage and become brave because they don’t have any choice but to do so. This is likely something that most young readers, and perhaps adult readers, can relate to.

Tolkien crafted Bilbo in such a way that his fears and preferences are clear and likely connected to the reader’s own. But, as he learns more about the world he’s a part of and makes friends with the dwarves, he proves to be incredibly loyal and willing to risk his life to help his friends retake their home.

There are several other interesting themes that more mature readers of The Hobbit will find and enjoy. One of these is greed. It is a theme that’s incredibly central to the story. While the dwarves do want to take their home back, they’re even more driven by the desire to reclaim the vast amounts of wealth waiting for them in the mountain. Their greed, and Smaug’s, defines the parameters of the story. By the end of the novel, Thorin has been overcome by his greed for the treasure broadly, the Arkenstone specifically, and the power these things are going to bring him. But, before he dies, he expresses remorse for what he did and said.

Older readers are likely also going to find themselves considering the importance of home in this novel. Bilbo loves his home and the comforts that are always there for him and the dwarves are desperate to take back theirs. It’s this connection between Bilbo and the dwarves that’s one of the primary reasons that Bilbo finally accepts his role in the quest and chooses to give his all to help his friends. Readers will likely feel the same connection to their own home and imagine what they would do in order to return to it.

The Hobbit is often compared to its sequels, The Lord of the Rings trilogy. The latter three novels were written after and directed towards the readers of The Hobbit who had grown up and were now prepared to read a much darker story about Middle-earth. These novels lack the same lighthearted and fun tone that J.R.R Tolkien uses in The Hobbit .

Throughout this novel, he addresses difficult subject matter as one would when speaking to a child. He talks around the most gruesome parts of a scene and only suggests that people have died without describing that they’ve actually done so. Despite this, the novel is complex. There are numerous races, such as dwarves, orcs, and goblins, and adventures that the main characters engage in.

The Hobbit Book Review: Tolkien's Enduring Children's Fantasy Novel

The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien Digital Art

Book Title: The Hobbit

Book Description: The Hobbit is an exciting and lighthearted novel in which the reader follows reluctant hero Bilbo Baggins and a group of dwarves on an incredible adventure.

Book Author: J.R.R. Tolkien

Book Edition: First Edition

Book Format: Hardcover

Publisher - Organization: George Allen & Unwin

Date published: September 21, 1937

ISBN: 0-684-12826-1

Number Of Pages: 311

Writing Style
Lasting Effect on Reader

The Hobbit Review

The Hobbit is a high fantasy novel that was published in 1973 and follows the adventures of Bilbo Baggins, a hobbit, and a group of dwarves. The party sets out to retake the dwarves home, The Lonely Mountain, from Smaug the dragon who is currently in possession of their treasure. They face many perilous dangers along the way that Tolkien describes in a tone and style suitable for the young readers for whom this novel was written.

The plot is exciting throughout the novel.
Bilbo’s character is relatable for readers of all ages.
The setting is interesting and diverse.
Leaves readers wanting more in regard to the places and people the group encounters.
Might not be as exciting for adult readers as young readers.
Problems are solved and dangers are defeated too easily.

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About Emma Baldwin

Emma Baldwin, a graduate of East Carolina University, has a deep-rooted passion for literature. She serves as a key contributor to the Book Analysis team with years of experience.

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<i>The Hobbit</i> Is Turning 80. Here’s What Reviewers Said About It in 1937

The Hobbit Is Turning 80. Here’s What Reviewers Said About It in 1937

W hen the first edition of The Hobbit: or, There And Back Again was first published — 80 years ago, on Sept. 21, 1937 — C.S. Lewis famously called the book a “marvellous” classic-in-the-making, and the New York Times called it “freshly original and delightfully imaginative.”

TIME Magazine, meanwhile, called it…nothing. The book did not receive a review in the magazine’s pages in 1937, nor when the first U.S. edition arrived the following year.

That omission, while an obvious oversight in retrospect, is also a telling detail in the history of J.R.R. Tolkien’s first Middle-earth masterpiece. In fact, it took decades for The Hobbit to make the transition from being a well-reviewed children’s book to a work seen as one part of a classic, culture-shaping narrative.

One crucial ingredient in making the difference was the release of Tolkien’s later Lord of the Rings books in the 1950s, but even those volumes, while they expanded readership, didn’t finish the work of nudging the books from their genre niche to pop-culture domination. In the 1960s, however, that changed. TIME documented the phenomenon in 1966, declaring that hobbits were the new literary heroes on American college campuses. “[The] Rings trilogy was first published in the U.S. twelve years ago, had a small but dedicated coterie of admirers, including Poet W. H. Auden and Critic C. S. Lewis, but languished largely unread until it was reprinted last year in two paperback editions,” the story explained. “Since then, campus booksellers have been hard put to keep up with the demand. At the Princeton bookstore, says one salesman, it is the ‘biggest seller since Lord of the Flies.'”

Why was it such a hit, besides the more accessible paperback format? Though Tolkien said he hadn’t intended any sort of message for modern readers, the students to whom TIME spoke said that they appreciated the chance to escape from the complicated world of the 1960s to one where you could “cheer the hero and boo the villain.” It was a perfect match between a generation and the precise breed of escapism it demanded.

And, though The Lord of the Rings was the story that captivated those college-age readers, it was The Hobbit that became America’s best-selling mass-market paperback of 1966.

By the time Tolkien died in 1973, TIME noted , his readership had spread from “a handful of literate Anglophiles” to hundreds of thousands of fans across the U.S. and the world. And while the 1960s may have marked a hobbitomania peak, the series has had a resurgence: In 2001, 1.6 million copies of the book were sold amid excitement over the coming Lord of the Rings movies, at the time the most of any year since it was first published.

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The Literary Edit

Review: The Hobbit – J R R Tolkien

With precious few weeks left before the year is out, and having set myself the task of reading at least 10 of the BBC Big Reads before 2014 draws to a close, after finishing Emma I soon began The Hobbit. Chosen largely because of a number of recommendations and partly because of its length; at around 250 pages it promised to be a fairly quick read – especially next to some other novels on the list.

When I began reading the BBC’s Big Read, I essentially did it to challenge my reading habits and try new genres; something I have undoubtedly done. Were it not for working my way through the list, there are a number of books – many of which I have absolutely adored – that I wouldn’t otherwise have read. Falling under the genre of fantasy – one that I tend to avoid – it certainly wouldn’t have made its way onto my reading pile under normal circumstances.

Having managed to avoid any of the films based on Tolkien’s work, I had little knowledge of the plot, other than the name of some of the characters; namely Gandalf and Bilbo Baggins. Based on the bedtime stories Tolkien used to tell his own children, and first published almost eighty years ago, The Hobbit follows the adventures of Bilbo Baggins as he embarks on a quest to retrieve the treasure stolen by Smaug the dragon. Accompanied by thirteen dwarves and Gandalf, a wizard, they encounter a number of obstacles along the way, all of which they eventually manage to overcome.

An entertaining read that brilliantly fuses fantasy, magic and adventure, The Hobbit has certainly whet my appetite for reading Lord of the Rings – the novel which took the number one spot in the BBC Top 100 Reads .

About The Hobbit

In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat: it was a hobbit-hole, and that means comfort.

Written for J.R.R. Tolkien’s own children, The Hobbit met with instant critical acclaim when it was first published in 1937. Now recognized as a timeless classic, this introduction to the hobbit Bilbo Baggins, the wizard Gandalf, Gollum, and the spectacular world of Middle-earth recounts of the adventures of a reluctant hero, a powerful and dangerous ring, and the cruel dragon Smaug the Magnificent.

About J R R Tolkien

John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, CBE, was an English writer, poet, WWI veteran (a First Lieutenant in the Lancashire Fusiliers, British Army), philologist, and university professor, best known as the author of the high fantasy classic works The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings .

Tolkien was Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon at Oxford from 1925 to 1945, and Merton Professor of English language and literature from 1945 to 1959.

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1 comment on “Review: The Hobbit – J R R Tolkien”

Gad you liked the Hobbit. LOTRs though is more of an adult novel whereas the Hobbit was supposed to cater to a younger crowd. Word of warning, if you ever move to the Silmarillion, be careful. It’s more of a textbook than an actual story. If you read it like you would parables from the Bible, you’ll be fine.

Review | The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien

It’s hard to explain adequately how I feel about “The Hobbit.” Simply put, it’s one of my favorite books, I’ve read it more times than any other novel (though I’m not sure what that tells you about me).

I remember devouring the book, over and over, reading it a good five or six times before I picked up “The Lord of the Rings,” which is weighty in comparison, and then another four or five times again through my teen years.I discovered Tolkien’s masterpiece (I do prefer it to The Lord of the Rings) for the first time when I was probably 9 or 10 when I found a copy in a cabinet in my grandfather’s dusty basement. My previous exposure to the fantasy genre had been limited to C.S.Lewis’ “Tales of Narnia,” and I don’t know that they really qualify quite the same way. Despite a loose cover with all the color of 1950s publishing (the bright, beautiful artistry that seemed to grace the covers of fantasy novels in the 1970s was yet to come when the copy I held in my hands had been printed), Mom recommended it, and so I started in on Bilbo’s tale, on “There and Back Again” as he called it, and was soon in as much love with a book as a ten year-old boy could be.

In comparison with the heavy world building that modern fantasy genre readers seems to demand and expect–think the fourteen volumes of Robert Jordan’s “Wheel of Time” or George R.R. Martin’s complex “Song of Fire and Ice” or the fathomless world of Steven Erikson and Ian Cameron Esslemont’s “Malazan Book of the Fallen”–Tolkien’s introduction of Middle Earth is light, almost playful, even when the adventure becomes dark and dangerous. I’ve heard it said that Tolkien invented hobbits because his home country England lacked, or had lost, a native mythology (I guess elves and dwarves are more Nordic or Germanic?), and he set out to restore it. With that effort, we are introduced to hobbits, and particularly Bilbo, who becomes the exception to the rule while still typifying his race, who are homebodies that in time will carry the fate of the world in their hands, but really, at essence, want little more than to sit at home in peace. Add in Gandalf, who becomes the quintessential image of a wizard forever after, complete with beard, peaked hat, vague magical powers that seem a cross between smoke and mirrors and real supernatural ability, but who is benevolent, wise, and always a friend to the good. Rounding out the simple cast of main characters are the thirteen dwarves and a host of other minor characters that appear, briefly, cameo-like, in Bilbo’s story: men, goblins, skin-shifters, eagles, elves, wolves, and one clever, mean, nasty dragon.

In as much as the world building has nothing to shout about compared to other more robust works, Tolkien’s simplicity is in many ways why “The Hobbit” has resonated for so many years and will continue to resonate. It is a clear eyed adventure where there good guys are good and the bad guys are bad. Escape from the mundane of daily life, and run away on an adventure. Leave the heavy issues to the real world.

Through it all, few of Tolkien’s characters ever receive enough attention for significant character development. Bilbo is the focus, and it is his story, even if it is not his quest; that belongs to the dwarves and their leaders, Thorin, “King under the Mountain.” Yet, but for him, his clever problem solving, spunk, and courage, time and again the expedition to the Lonely Mountain would have been ended, whether at the hands of goblins beneath the Misty Mountains, in the cocoons of giant spiders in the darkness of Mirkwood, or in deep prison cells as captives of woodland elves.

So, yes, the story is plot heavy and character development light. When rumors, proved to be true, emerged that Peter Jackson would turn the short novel into a three-part trilogy on the big screen, I found myself questioning how he would fill the time. After all, “The Lord of the Rings” is far longer and more detailed, but still only produced three movies. Much lighter and quicker a read, “The Hobbit” seemed to merit only one…until I finished the rereading. Light as it is, the story is plot heavy, with “one thing after another” happening as Bilbo, Gandalf, and the dwarves follow their quest to regain the Lonely Mountain from the dragon Smaug. Three movies may not be as difficult to produce as I had thought, and I think that others who have enjoyed the book might feel the same. “The Hobbit” is a novel as beloved by its fans as any this generation, and by extending the treatment to three movies instead of one, Jackson will mitigate the danger of complaints that this part or that were cut out to fit in the time frame available in a big screen production.

But back to the book itself. Each time I have read it felt like a fresh adventure, and as I read this time I felt young again. As I turned over the last page in the early hours of the morning after tending to a fussy one-year old, I smiled with the ever buoyant Gandalf telling Bilbo that he is only a small piece in the world. Later, I believe in “The Lord of the Rings,” Gandalf will note that it is on small things that the world hinges, but I don’t have to imagine what foreshadowing this is: I have seen what happens next.

As the book closes where it began, in the quiet little hobbit-hole (“and that means comfort”) I found myself looking forward to introducing Bilbo and Gandalf to my children. They are still too young, but the years are coming when they will perhaps still still enough for me to read to them the tale of Bilbo and the trolls Bert, Tom, and Bill, or the riddles in the dark with Gollum, or in the mountain with Smaug.

That perhaps is the lesson from Tolkien, if there is one, that I take away from “The Hobbit.” Nothing has brought me happiness like what I have found in my home–in my wife, my children, and, occasionally my books. As much as anyone can seek adventure, in the end the peace and contentment we seek is in the (mostly and occasionally) quiet of home, where we can curl up with a good book, a warm drink, and the adventures of our imagination. I look forward to the day when I can share that adventure with my own little “hobbits,” reading the tale of Bilbo the Hobbit to a new generation of adventurers.

[Previously posted at Publius Online ]

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Dan Burton lives in Millcreek, Utah, where he practices law by day and everything else by night. He reads about history, politics, science, medicine, and current events, as well as more serious genres such as science fiction and fantasy.

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Book Review | The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien

Book Review

Bilbo Baggins was content to stay in the Shire, living his days out in his hobbit hole. But when Gandalf the wizard visits the Shire and Bilbo invites him to tea, the hobbit’s life changes forever. Thirteen dwarves show up on his doorstep with Gandalf, speaking of an adventure to reclaim their family’s mountain and gold from the dragon Smaug. The itch to travel and experience life outside the Shire overcomes Bilbo, and he starts his journey to help the dwarves reclaim what was lost.

When you begin reading The Hobbit , don’t expect the flashy drawn out fight scenes and plot twists you’ll see in modern day fantasy. Written in 1937, the style of writing is vastly different but has aged well over the years. There is a wide cast of characters, but Tolkien makes sure they all stay in the reader’s view and keeps the story steadily moving forward. While the characters will have mishaps and battles, the details are oftentimes summarized making the scenes appropriate for a younger crowd while still maintaining enough for the older.

Following along with Bilbo was like walking among friends. The way the narrator talks about the hobbit and his companions is with familiarity and respect for their choices. Often Bilbo has to think outside of the box, and instead of rushing into situations, he tries to talk through them and keep open communication instead of resorting to fighting. I wish this style of confrontation made into more modern day fantasy.

Listening to The Hobbit on audiobook enhanced the experience for me. Rob Inglis did a wonderful job voicing the characters and bringing to life the songs I most likely would have skipped over if I were reading the print version. And his version of Gollum was phenomenal! If you haven’t had the chance to read, or listen to, The Hobbit I highly recommend it. This is one of the only classics I have enjoyed.

To Purchase: Bookshop | The Tolkien Society

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A Journey of Words

Book review: the hobbit, the hobbit by j.r.r. tolkien my rating: 5 / 5 genre: classic fantasy.

This is not going to be a structured review with a recommendation or warning to stay away. It’s really just going to be my musings on my first foray into written Tolkien. First, let me give a reference point–as I said, I’ve never read any Tolkien before this. I have seen all of the movies, though. I love the LoTR movies, though have only watched the Hobbit movies once. Going into each of these 6 movies as they came out, I knew absolutely nothing about the stories. I know that having seen the movies, though, and fallen in love with some of the characters will taint the reading of the books for the first time. I’m okay with that.

So now, about this book. I decided some time last year to start with The Hobbit , because it’s written for a younger audience. I figured it’d give me an idea of what the LoTR books were like and of whether I even thought I’d be able to read them. Besides, The Hobbit precedes the other books, even if the movies came out in the opposite order. I am so very glad I did it this way. I enjoyed reading The Hobbit , even as I felt that the story meandered more than I would normally prefer. It was really interesting to get more depth on the story, on the world, on some of the characters.

I knew about some of the things that had been made up for the movie, like the female elf and her romance with one of the dwarves (Kili, I think?) or the fact that Legolas was there at all. But I had thought that the Necromancer was created by the movie makers as well, and it was interesting to see that Sauron was, in fact, a background menace in the book after all. No, we don’t follow Gandalf to see him, but he does speak of ousting him from Mirkwood.

I was surprised by how long the party tended to stay places. Days or even weeks on end, before they moved on. And I’ll tell you, Elrond does not seem to be portrayed well in the movies. I like Hugo Weaving, but I remember his Elrond as aloof, even haughty. He’s so much warmer in The Hobbit . But to be fair, I haven’t watched any of the movies for a few years now, so I wouldn’t be surprised to find out I’m remembering many things wrong. For all I know, I’m mashing Elrond together with Agent Smith.

So now that I’ve read this book, I have decided that I must move on to the LoTR books. I know they’ll be longer and probably harder to read, which is why I’m listening to audiobooks instead of reading physical copies (as I did with The Hobbit ). I won’t become a lifelong Tolkien fan, I’m sure, but I’m already glad I’ve embarked on this quest.

Find out more about The Hobbit

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If you’ve read this book, or read it in the future, feel free to let me know what you think!

Reviews and Recommendations

We've comprehensively compiled reviews of The Hobbit from the world's leading experts.

Richard Branson Founder/Virgin Group Today is World Book Day, a wonderful opportunity to address this #ChallengeRichard sent in by Mike Gonzalez of New Jersey: Make a list of your top 65 books to read in a lifetime. (Source)

Cressida Cowell The Hobbit is such a richly imagined fantasy that, especially as a child, you can live in it. It is so completely immersive. (Source)

Melvin Burgess I have always thought that The Hobbit was a better book than The Lord of the Rings. (Source)

Ryan Mccaffrey It's funny. I *adore* the LOTR Extended Editions, but feel the opposite about the Hobbit trilogy as far as its running time goes (I love the book, to be clear). So this...this is something I'd like to see: https://t.co/uiBSSqKggK (Source)

Lucas Morales My favorite books are Tolkien’s the Lord of the Rings, the Hobbit, and the Silmarillion. In fact these book hold a special place in my memory. In highschool I was so into Tolkien that I delved into linguistics on my own time. I was obsessed with Quenya (Tolkien’s elvish language). I combined that obsession with my mediocre skills as a programmer, and made a sort of dictionary/translator program. This was actually my first venturing into entrepreneurship, because in my naivety I thought I might be able to sell my software to fellow enthusiasts (the first movie was just coming out at the time). (Source)

Yaro Starak During the early days of my life, my mother read to me the classics, like “The Hobbit”, “The Lord of the Rings”, Enid Blyton, “The Land of the Faraway Tree”, “The Narnia Chronicles”, “The Neverending Story” . All these books were really important to me as a kid and they became just as important to me as an adult because I read through most of them again, for example (obviously) The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit and also The Narnia Chronicles. Went through all of those again and got something powerful out of them because you don’t realise as a child what kind of maybe more spiritual or... (Source)

Lev Grossman First up, The Hobbit, or There and Back Again, by JRR Tolkien. But you knew I was going to say that. This one book, which was published in 1937, defined so many variables for the fantasy tradition that are still in place today. Tolkien’s extraordinary achievement was to recover the epic landscapes of Anglo-Saxon myth, bring them back to life, and then to take us through them on foot, so we could see the details up close, at human scale. The Hobbit is both mythic and relatable at the same time – The New Yorker writer Adam Gopnik recently called it “an arranged marriage between the Elder Edda... (Source)

Michal Ptacek My most favourite book is Godfather by Mario Puzo. I think it is even slightly more interesting and better than a movie which is almost perfect. Total masterpiece :) Another would be The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit. (Source)

Rankings by Category

The Hobbit is ranked in the following categories:

#12 in 12-Year-Old
#18 in 13-Year-Old
#8 in 20th Century
#13 in 7th Grade
#15 in 8th Grade
#14 in 9-Year-Old
#15 in Action
#5 in Action Adventure
#12 in Adaptation
#3 in Adult Fantasy
#2 in Adventure
#1 in Adventure Fantasy
#3 in Adventure Fiction
#12 in Author
#12 in Barcelona
#20 in Beautiful
#3 in Black Holes
#10 in Candy
#8 in Chapter
#4 in Character
#18 in Childhood
#13 in Children's Classics
#7 in Children's Fantasy
#11 in Classic
#8 in Clean
#3 in Collection
#1 in Dragon
#1 in Elves
#14 in Entertaining
#12 in Entertainment
#2 in Epic Fantasy
#2 in Fantasy
#1 in Fantasy Adventure
#1 in Fantasy Epic
#2 in Fantasy Fiction
#2 in Fantasy Sci-Fi
#10 in Fantasy Series
#8 in Fiction
#11 in Fiction Series
#3 in Folio Society
#17 in Gift
#9 in Happy
#17 in Hebrew
#17 in Heroes
#16 in High School Reading
#11 in Illustrated
#10 in Kinder
#4 in Kindle Unlimited
#1 in Landscape
#13 in Latin
#3 in Leather
#8 in Leather Bound
#11 in Library
#14 in Light
#9 in Magic
#5 in Magical Fantasy
#1 in Medieval Fantasy
#20 in Middle School
#9 in Modern Classic
#6 in Mommy
#13 in Monsters
#18 in Most Influential
#11 in Movie
#14 in Movies
#4 in Mystical
#6 in Mythical Creatures
#7 in Nerdy
#14 in Nostalgia
#12 in Novel
#1 in Older Children
#3 in Paperback
#11 in Possession
#1 in Quest
#12 in Quotation
#4 in Read Aloud
#1 in Science Fiction Fantasy
#17 in Story
#9 in Summer Reading
#7 in Teen Adventure
#12 in Top Ten
#10 in Trade
#8 in Video
#13 in Walking
#19 in Wanderlust
#8 in Wizards
#4 in Young Teen

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The hobbit: 10 unpopular opinions (according to reddit).

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The Hobbit trilogy by director Peter Jackson was a low-key prequel to the hugely successful LOTR franchise from the early 2000s. The franchise received a lukewarm reception from Tolkien fans who thought the movies could have adapted the available lore better than they did.

RELATED: 10 Books That Were Better Than Their Film Adaptations

While the majority of folks seem to take the movies with a pinch of salt, a few unpopular opinions that go against the grain of the popular viewpoint are expressed from time to time on Reddit.

An Enjoyable Experience Casting Purism Aside

Bilbo runs through a field in The Hobbit

The Hobbit trilogy might not qualify as great but they are still quite good movies and an enjoyable experience, on the whole, irrespective of whether or not they played around with the source material, feels this fan.

One of the main complaints that Tolkien fans have regarding the movies is that they are terrible adaptations of Tolkien's original work. But if one can cast aside the purism, then this fan feels that the movies themselves aren't necessarily bad at all.

Freeman Was A Fantastic Bilbo Baggins

Actor Martin Freeman broke into the world of popular cinema with his role as the hobbit Bilbo Baggins. Freeman is a well-known actor although his portrayal of Bilbo was criticized for his characteristic mannerisms, which he brings into every role, whether as John Watson or as Bilbo Baggins.

But this Redditor disagrees with the popular opinion that Freeman didn't do justice to his role. The fan feels that he made a fine Bilbo and that despite the flaws in the movies, the lead actor's performance was a joy to watch.

Enough Lore For The Three Movies

Another common grievance about the trilogy is that there didn't need to be three 3-hour long movies because there simply wasn't enough subject matter to justify all three.

RELATED: All Lord Of The Rings And Hobbit Movies, Ranked By Budget

But one fan strongly disagrees with this popular opinion, specifically pointing out that there was sufficient lore woven into Tolkien's universe that could be adapted into the movies. Moreover, adapting a grand epic universe such as Tolkien's was never a simple task and various considerations would have been made with the film medium in mind. For instance, including Legolas in the Hobbit movies, since the fans were already familiar with him from the LOTR trilogy, and Gandalf's pursuit of the Necromancer.

The Tauriel-Hate Club

Actress Evangeline Lilly played the she-elf Tauriel in the second and the third installments of the Hobbit franchise. Tauriel was a brave warrior and a captain of the elven forces of the Woodland realms. One of the major plotlines involving her was the love triangle between her, the dwarf Kili, and Legolas, that ended in tragedy.

The addition of the she-elf was yet another thing a majority of viewers had a bone to pick with, not least because she wasn't there in the books. However, not everybody hated her and some thought adding her to the story was in fact quite clever.

The CGI Didn't Take Away From The Movies

Luke Evans as Bard and Lee Pace as Thranduil in The Hobbit Battle of Five Armies

The Hobbit movies have been criticized heavily for their nigh comical use of CGI, especially when compared to the LOTR franchise.

Now, some fans do agree that the CGI wasn't great , that it was overbearing even. But according to this Redditor, the CGI doesn't exactly take away from the films as such and doesn't deserve to be held accountable for discrediting the entire franchise.

The Dwarves Were Thoroughly Entertaining

One popular opinion about the movies has been that the characters were bland and lackluster, and the dwarves even appeared cartoonish with no character development.

RELATED: The Hobbit: 10 Thorton Mannerisms From The Book Richard Armitage Nails

However, the fans who actually love the movies opine that the characters, especially the dwarves, aren't terrible at all and that they are fun and entertaining to watch , implying that the popular opinions leveled against the characterization in the movies aren't justified.

More Upbeat Than the LOTR Trilogy

There are those that hate the Hobbit trilogy when comparing it with the LOTR movies, and then there is a minority of fans who think that the story of Bilbo Baggins was told better by Peter Jackson than that of Frodo.

This Redditor found the Hobbit movies lighter-hearted and better paced than the LOTR franchise. Both the trilogies were beloved but the fan thought the Hobbit was somehow more fun and upbeat in general.

Bilbo Was More Interesting Than Frodo

Bilbo Baggins looking confused in The Hobbit

In a uniquely unpopular opinion, some feel that Martin Freeman's Bilbo was way more interesting and enterprising as a character than Frodo Baggins played by Elijah Wood.

This fan even states that Wood was somewhat cringeworthy and even appeared worthless at times in his iconic portrayal of Frodo, as opposed to Freeman who had more spunk, and brought something more to his role.

Better Fight Sequences & More Entertaining Than The LOTR

Ian McKellen as Gandalf in The Hobbit The Battle of Five Armies

Another highly unpopular opinion is that Peter Jackson's second, not so successful attempt at revisiting Middle-Earth, was actually quite as great as his first, in terms of both story and music.

RELATED: The Hobbit: 10 Best Supporting Characters, Ranked

The CGI was better in the Hobbit trilogy than in the LOTR, according to this Redditor , as were the fight sequences, and even the jokes were better in what was overall a fun mix of darkness, fun, and excitement.

A Great Prequel

Martin Freeman as Bilbo Baggins and Ian McKellen as Gandalf in The Hobbit Battle of the Five Armies

To conclude, here's a fan who gave the movies a big thumbs up and stated that at the end of the day, it was a great prequel to the LOTR movies.

Contrary to popular opinion that the prequel was no match for the original epic movies that became phenomenal hits close to two decades ago , and have gained cult status all over the world, only growing in fandom over the years.

NEXT: The Lord of the Rings 5 Reasons Hobbits Are Underrated (& 5 They Are Overrated)

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A close reading of two books by authors who advise Kamala Harris reveals a vision for a humbler approach to foreign policy.

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Over the past three and a half years, U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris has faithfully echoed her boss, U.S. President Joe Biden, by invoking pretty much the same hegemonic worldview that every American president has embraced since World War II. As Harris put it in a 2023 speech —quoting a favorite phrase of Biden’s—“a strong America remains indispensable to the world.”

But the United States may be downgraded to a humbler status if Harris is elected president in November, based on the thinking of her chief advisors.

In their written work, Harris’s national security advisor, Philip Gordon, and deputy national security advisor, Rebecca Lissner, have sketched the outlines of a new worldview in which Washington frankly acknowledges its past excesses and dramatically lowers its ambitions. Or as Lissner put it in An Open World: How America Can Win the Contest for 21st Century Order , the 2020 book she coauthored with another Biden administration official: The United States should give up on strategic primacy and the “increasingly obsolete post-Cold War ‘liberal international order.’”

Instead of seeking to remain the unquestioned hegemon, the United States should seriously downsize its global role, wrote Lissner and her co-author, Mira Rapp-Hooper, who is currently Biden’s National Security Council director for East Asia and Oceania. It’s past time for Washington to discard the “messianic” goal of transforming the world in its image—the United States’ basic policy approach going back to Woodrow Wilson, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Harry Truman. Instead, it should ratchet down to a much narrower role: merely preserving an open global system in which the United States can prosper.

From left: Rebecca Lissner, a deputy national security advisor to Harris, and policy advisor Ike Irby speak with communications director Kirsten Allen before departing the airport in Houston, Texas, on Aug. 1. Kevin Lamarque/AFP via Getty Images

“As the unipolar moment wanes, so too must any illusions of the United States’ ability to craft order unilaterally and universally according to its own liberal preferences,” Lissner and Rapp-Hooper wrote. “Insisting upon the United States’ international leadership role but departing from reliance on primacy as the cornerstone of a messianic liberal mission, a strategy of openness departs from post-Cold War liberal universalism, Cold War-style containment, and the traditional alternative of retrenchment.”

An Open World: How America Can Win the Contest for 21st Century Order , Rebecca Lissner and Mira Rapp-Hooper, Yale University Press, 216 pp, $26, September 2020

This new approach would mean a lot of accommodation of autocratic and illiberal regimes and a discarding of ideological crusades or containment strategies—all in the pragmatic interest of keeping trade open and bolstering cooperation on critical issues such as climate change, future pandemics, and artificial intelligence regulation. To put it simply, Lissner and Rapp-Hooper argued that policies of containment and hegemony should be supplanted by the far more modest goal of ensuring an “accessible global commons.” The United States has one critical task left as the “indispensable” superpower, they wrote: It is “the only country that can guarantee an open system.”

Gordon would likely agree—at least about leaving behind, at long last, the messianic strain in U.S. foreign policy. His own 2020 book, Losing the Long Game: The False Promise of Regime Change in the Middle East , is a fierce dissection of various failed U.S. efforts in the region dating back 70 years to the CIA-orchestrated ouster of Iranian President Mohammad Mossadegh.

Though he lumped in Afghanistan—which is technically in central Asia—with the failed U.S. interventions in Egypt, Iraq, Iran, Libya, and Syria, Gordon was right to see a common theme: regime change almost never works. And like the proverbial lunatic who tries the same thing over and over thinking he might get a different result, U.S. policymakers never seem to learn the right lessons, he argued.

In every case, from 1953 (Mossadegh), to two disastrous episodes in Afghanistan (the 1980s and post-9/11), to the catastrophic invasion of Iraq in 2003, and to fitful efforts in Egypt, Libya, and Syria after the 2011 Arab Spring, Gordon identified a pattern.

U.S. National Security Advisor Philip H. Gordon speaks with Vice President Kamala Harris during a meeting with Caribbean leaders at the Summit of the Americas in Los Angeles on June 9, 2022. Jim Watson/AFP via Getty Images

“As different as each episode was, and as varied as were the methods used, the history of regime change in the post-World War II Middle East is a history of repeated patterns,” he wrote, “in which policymakers underestimated the challenges of ousting a regime, overstated the threat faced by the United States, embraced the optimistic narratives of exiles or local actors with little power and vested interests, prematurely declared victory, failed to anticipate the chaos that would inevitably ensue after regime collapse, and ultimately found themselves bearing the costs—in some cases more than a trillion dollars and thousands of American lives—for many years or even decades to come.”

Gordon noted that critics, especially the few remaining neoconservatives in Washington, would argue that in some cases regime change had worked very well. This is most notably true in the case of postwar Germany and Japan. But he argued persuasively that these were unique circumstances: two highly advanced countries after a devastating world war. And had it not been for the strange annealing effect of the subsequent 40-year-long Cold War, even the successful transformations of Germany and Japan might not have worked as completely as they did because U.S. patience would have grown thin very quickly—as it has in subsequent cases. A faster U.S. withdrawal from Europe and Japan might well have undercut the effort to fundamentally change Berlin and Tokyo.

Losing the Long Game: The False Promise of Regime Change in the Middle East , Philip H. Gordon, St. Martins Press, 370 pp, $29, October 2020.

Grim and exhaustive as Gordon’s assessment is, it actually understates the case for change. That’s because, added all together, these failed U.S. attempts at transformation contributed mightily to the growing obsolescence of the current liberal international order that so concerns Lissner and Rapp-Hooper.

The history that Gordon recounts is a history that keeps on giving. Today the number-one menace keeping the United States tied down in the Middle East is the very same Islamic Republic of Iran that rose to power fueled by its opposition to the American “Great Satan,” produced by the 1953 coup and empowered by the 2003 invasion of Iraq. In fact, a U.S. Army study completed in 2018 found that “an emboldened and expansionist Iran appears to be the only victor” in George W. Bush’s Iraq war—the exact opposite of what Bush and his neoconservatives sought.

The vicious spiral set in motion by these misguided policy choices undermined U.S. legitimacy—or its primacy, to use Lissner’s and Rapp-Hooper’s term—as global overseer. The unnecessary and fraudulently justified invasion of Iraq, and the drain on U.S. resources and attention that resulted, laid the groundwork for Washington’s 20-year failure in Afghanistan (which led to Biden’s declaration in August 2021 that he was putting an end to “major military operations to remake other countries,” which of course put the president in accord with Gordon’s advice). The Iraq catastrophe also exposed U.S. military vulnerabilities on the ground in the worst way, tutoring Russia, China, and the rest of the world in how to outmaneuver and fight what was once considered an unassailable superpower. Moreover, the Iraq and Afghanistan debacles projected an image of panicky U.S. retreat, from which Russian President Vladimir Putin may have drawn encouragement to invade Ukraine. (Putin also invoked the unilateral U.S. invasion of Iraq to justify his own aggression in Ukraine.)

As counterinsurgency expert David Kilcullen wrote in his book, The Dragons and the Snakes: How the Rest Learned to Fight the West , also released in 2020, the rising challenge to U.S. hegemony from countries such as China and Russia is linked to the United States’ “ repeated failure to convert battlefield victory into strategic success or to translate that success into a better peace.” Over the past two decades, the lone superpower has allowed itself to get bogged down in a “seemingly endless string of continuous, inconclusive wars that have sapped [its] energy while [its] rivals prospered,” Kilcullen wrote.

And so the postwar international system, at least as once conceived, went down the tube as Beijing and Moscow began to declare that U.S. hegemony was no longer acceptable to them.

Beyond that, these failures helped to create the deep divisions in the American polity that led Lissner and Rapp-Hooper to conclude that traditional U.S. leadership is no longer tenable. Together these titanic errors of policy also helped to discredit the political establishment in Washington and open the way for former U.S. President Donald Trump and his “America First” neo-isolationism.

There were, to be sure, other U.S. failures that undermined U.S. legitimacy as global leader, Lissner and Rapp-Hooper wrote—especially the 2008 financial disaster generated by Wall Street greed and the fecklessness of Washington regulators. But it’s clear that—far more than any fundamental flaws within the international system itself—it was largely the excesses of America’s postwar agenda and the arrogance with which it was pursued that squandered the world’s trust.

Gordon didn’t go quite as far as Lissner and Rapp-Hooper in his conclusions. Known as a passionate trans-Atlanticist—he served as assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs in the Obama administration—Gordon acknowledged that “the regime change temptation will never go away.” He wrote: “The bias of American political culture, resulting from the country’s record of achievement and belief in its own exceptionalism, is to believe every problem has a solution.” Rather than reconfiguring U.S. policy entirely, he suggested that in most cases when it comes to rogue regimes “the best alternative to regime change looks a lot like the Containment strategy that won the Cold War.”

Harris arrives for an address by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky during a joint meeting of Congress at the U.S. Capitol in Washington on Dec. 21, 2022. Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

So where does this all leave us? There’s no use trying to unwind history and restore the old system. In many ways, despite their different conclusions, Gordon’s and Lissner’s books fit together like two big pieces of a puzzle: Thanks to the policy disasters detailed by Gordon (in which he took part, as a National Security Council official under then-President Barack Obama), some sort of humbler approach, along the lines proposed by Lissner and Rapp-Hooper, may be needed. And this strategy will likely be bipartisan to some degree.

Indeed, in their writings there is little doubt that Gordon and Lissner—the two chief foreign policy advisors to the woman who could soon be the next U.S. president—are in the process of codifying, perhaps for decades to come, the anti-interventionist impulse becoming ingrained in both political parties.

If Trump is elected instead of Harris, of course, he’s unlikely to embrace Lissner’s strategy of openness—at least not openly. (Trump continues to rhetorically demean U.S. allies and tout new tariffs as his main foreign-policy instrument.) What Trump is likely to do, however, is to continue to downgrade the United States’ global policeman role. Trump was instrumental in setting in motion the withdrawal from Afghanistan and, as Gordon wrote, also eager to pull out of Syria. Indeed, it is striking that after five years of dithering by Obama over whether to help the Syrian rebels, it was Trump who best put his finger on the problem. He questioned why the United States was helping to topple Syria’s dictatorial leader, Bashar al-Assad, when, as Gordon quoted Trump as saying, “Syria was fighting ISIS, and you have to get rid of ISIS. … Now we’re backing rebels against Syria, and we have no idea who these people are.”

Lissner and Rapp-Hooper’s prescriptions may be ambitious, but at the same time they are refreshingly modest in scope. Nothing has gotten Washington into more trouble over the decades than its continuing eruptions of hubristic policy. These extended from Wilson’s quixotic desire to make the world “ safe for democracy ” after World War I to then-Defense Department official Paul Wolfowitz’s uber-hawkish defense policy guidance from 1992, which embraced a frank post-Cold War policy of preventing the rise of rival military powers. It was this sort of thinking by Wolfowitz and his fellow neoconservatives that later helped justify the Iraq War.

Lissner and Rapp-Hooper’s open world concept also jibes with the changing calculus of our times: In economic terms, the divide between left and right wing is all but gone; instead, as Fareed Zakaria wrote in his 2024 book, Age of Revolutions , for the two political parties the old left versus right divide has been replaced by a struggle between those who want to keep the United States open to the world versus those who want to close it down more than ever. It is no accident that trade skeptics on the progressive left in the United States have come to lionize Trump’s former trade representative, Robert Lighthizer, for his tariff policies. (In his 2023 book, No Trade is Free , Lighthizer makes a point of thanking U.S. union leaders and acknowledging Lori Wallach—a progressive trade expert—as “a longtime friend and co-conspirator.”)

So Lissner and Rapp-Hooper may have chosen just the right battlefield to die on—or not. If we can salvage some degree of openness, we can save something of the old system. As they wrote: “Openness does not, of course, incorporate the totality of American strategic objectives. Other threats, like nuclear proliferation, disease, or terrorism, may menace vital U.S. interests. Yet closed spheres of influence—whether exercised regionally or in particular domains—present the greatest danger to the United States’ security and prosperity” because they preclude necessary international cooperation.

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Another fundamental problem that Lissner and Rapp-Hooper hint at is that the United States may no longer be up to the task of fully managing the international system it created. There is a growing mismatch between the complexity of this world system and the level of knowledge in the U.S. populace because of laggard education and dysfunctional political systems. Americans may simply no longer understand the system—how global free trade works, how military alliances keep them safe—well enough to maintain it. At the very least, Americans now have very little sympathy for that system.

The United States’ domestic polarization may also wreak havoc on some of the solutions Lissner and Rapp-Hooper propose. The authors propose a plan to “harness the private sector for national advantage” and bring the tech sector and Washington closer together. “The next administration should consider elevating the Office of Science and Technology Policy to a National Emerging Technology Council (NETC) on par with the National Security Council and National Economic Council,” they write. Yet the leaders of the United States’ tech sector have long tried to keep their distance from Washington—especially on defense policy–except for a few oddball pairings such as Elon Musk and Donald Trump.

Perhaps the most fundamental question is whether the international system is really as obsolete as Lissner and Rapp-Hooper suggested. Yes, many problems the duo analyzed four years ago remain, including the increasing irrelevance of the World Trade Organization. But some of their views are dated. Lissner and Rapp-Hooper tended to echo the fears of Biden’s national security advisor, Jake Sullivan, and Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell, who warned in a 2019 essay in Foreign Affairs , “Competition Without Catastrophe,” of the menace of “China’s fusion of authoritarian capitalism and digital surveillance.” Similarly, Lissner and Rapp-Hooper wrote that “China is at the forefront of a new model of ‘techno-authoritarianism’ that could confer considerable competitive advantages.” Yet in the four years since the book’s publication, it’s become far clearer that China under President Xi Jinping has only fallen behind thanks to this new model, with its economy seriously stagnating and Xi pleading for more foreign investment.

Moreover, in the wake of Putin’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Washington has been forced to revert, to some extent, to its old role of global enforcer. This has proved especially true as the European Union has fallen behind the U.S. economically. As the Carnegie Endowment concludes in a new report that highlights how difficult it is to bring about strategic change in U.S. foreign policy, “the administration’s response to that crisis has been to expand America’s security role in Europe and thereby create a new status quo.” Much the same can be said of the United States’ role in the Middle East following Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel, as Biden found himself sending carriers and submarines to the Mediterranean and forced to defend Israel from the air.

Lissner and Gordon arrive to attend a state dinner in honor of Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida at the White House in Washington, D.C., on April 10. Ting Shen/Pool/Sipa USA

Yet we are also clearly moving into some kind of a new anti-interventionist era wherein Washington’s default mode—regardless of who occupies the White House—will be to stay out of global conflicts wherever and however possible. And it seems likely that if Harris wins, Gordon and Lissner will be major players. Gordon, to be sure, is more of a traditionalist who would be reluctant to tamper too much with the United States’ global security role. But it’s noteworthy that Lissner had a significant role drafting Biden’s national security strategy—and yet she chose to join the vice president’s staff in 2022 to influence policy for the next generation.

Asked whether Harris embraces Gordon’s and Lissner’s views, an aide to the vice president said only that Harris “is advised by a range of people with diverse views, and their previous writings reflect their personal views. Anyone looking to understand the vice president’s worldview should look at what she has said and done on the world stage.”

As for Harris’s current superior, perhaps Biden’s most enduring legacy—one that a President Harris would surely continue—will be that he sought to conduct a sort of halfway-house foreign policy that bridges the global policeman era and this new era of restraint. Biden has also attempted to find a workable compromise between the old consensus on globalization and the emerging cross-party consensus in favor of protectionism and industrial policy. As foreign-policy expert Jessica T. Mathews argued in Foreign Affairs , Biden has “unambiguously left behind the hubris of the ‘unipolar moment’ that followed the Cold War, proving that the United States can be deeply engaged in the world without military action or the taint of hegemony.”

U.S. President Joe Biden and Harris host a signing ceremony for the “Consolidated Appropriations Act,” which includes billions in humanitarian, military, and economic assistance to Ukraine, in Washington on March 15, 2022. Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

At the same time, however, since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and Hamas’s attack on Israel, Biden has often gone back to invoking the old postwar view of the United States’ role, calling the United States the “arsenal of democracy” (FDR’s phrase) and declaring that “American leadership is what holds the world together.”

And given the ongoing crises around the world—especially in Europe, the Middle East, and possibly East Asia if the Taiwan issue heats up—it’s highly questionable whether the United States can adjust downward when there is no other major power that even comes close to approaching Washington’s global sway. If it can, then maintaining global openness may be a worthy—and perhaps achievable—goal.

Michael Hirsh is a columnist for Foreign Policy. He is the author of two books: Capital Offense: How Washington’s Wise Men Turned America’s Future Over to Wall Street and At War With Ourselves: Why America Is Squandering Its Chance to Build a Better World . X: @michaelphirsh

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Discussion Forums about Books and Reading | The Hobbit Trilogy: GOOD or NOT?

The Hobbit Trilogy: GOOD or NOT?

Post by Grace Bela » 15 May 2020, 17:47

Re: The Hobbit Trilogy: GOOD or NOT?

Post by Julie-p » 16 May 2020, 08:09

Post by Barbie_sidhu » 23 May 2020, 12:50

Post by JustineSophia2 » 25 May 2020, 19:12

Post by Lydia Matson » 01 Jun 2020, 11:25

Post by lisa mullan » 03 Jun 2020, 11:05

Post by Sarah Eliza » 14 Sep 2021, 19:46

Post by Graham Gill » 15 Sep 2021, 03:48

Post by Kayla_Sanders » 27 Sep 2021, 15:53

Post by Aashu Chaudhary » 28 Sep 2021, 20:45

Post by Bibi Farheen K » 19 Feb 2022, 01:43

Post by Claire Twy » 23 Feb 2022, 22:45

Grace Bela wrote: ↑ 15 May 2020, 17:47 For a bit of background, I've always been a big fan of both Tolkien and fantasy movies. So when I heard about the Hobbit movies coming out, I was so excited. While the trilogy is blatantly untrue to the book, I honestly still loved it. Which I know is a VERY unpopular opinion. Seeing characters of one of my favorite books come to life was such an amazing experience. Martin Freeman was a wonderful choice for Bilbo and I was in awe of watching Smaug on the big screen. Even though it wasn't always what you would expect from the book and added a lot of material, I really like the trilogy's plot. What do you guys think about the movies versus the books? Did you enjoy the movies or think that they're not that great?

Post by Zulaykha_001 » 25 Feb 2022, 08:24

Post by Danielle Jost » 25 Feb 2022, 21:39

Post by Inks and Quills » 02 Mar 2022, 20:21

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Common Sense Says
Parents Say 30 Reviews
Kids Say 136 Reviews

Based on 136 kid reviews

Kid Reviews

Classic fantasy book, but there is violence and tobacco and alcohol references..

This title has:

Great messages
Great role models
Too much violence
Too much drinking/drugs/smoking

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Classic book, the hobbit - 1937, j.r.r. tolkien, amazing book with a riveting plot, i highly recommend it..

Educational value

Decent, not good, but not terrible

J.r.r tolkien's first fantasy entry to a world of greatness., what to read next.

Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH

Finding Nemo

The Dark Crystal

Fantasy books for kids, coming-of-age books, related topics.

Magic and Fantasy
Great Boy Role Models
Monsters, Ghosts, and Vampires

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Throwing the book: Democrats enlarge a copy of the ‘Project 2025' blueprint as an anti-GOP prop

Michigan Sen. Mallory McMorrow brought out a copy of Project 2025, a blueprint created by the Heritage Foundation for a second Trump term. She then slammed it on the podium.

Michigan State Senator Mallory McMorrow holding up a book during her remarks at the Democratic National Convention on Monday, Aug. 19, 2024, in Chicago. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

Malcolm Kenyatta, member of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives, speaking at the Democratic National Convention on Tuesday, Aug. 20, 2024, in Chicago. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

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▶ Follow the AP’s live coverage and analysis from the 2024 Democratic National Convention.

CHICAGO (AP) — Vice President Kamala Harris and Democratic allies have turned Project 2025 into one of their most consistent tools against the campaign of former President Donald Trump. Now, they’ve taken the fight over the conservative-written handbook to a bigger new scale.

Mallory McMorrow, a 37-year-old state senator from Michigan, brought out a giant copy of the roughly 900-page “Mandate for Leadership” on Monday night, the first evening of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. She slammed it on the lectern, then made an expression to signal how heavy it was as she opened to start reading.

“They went ahead and wrote down all the extreme things that Donald Trump wants to do in the next four years,” McMorrow said from the stage. “We read it.”

Trump says Project 2025 is not related to his campaign and has denied knowing about the Heritage Foundation, which is overseeing its own transition effort with the help of dozens of his allies and former aides. Democrats have for months tried to pin Trump to Project 2025’s most sweeping proposals.

DNC officials plan to talk about Project 2025 every night of the convention. McMorrow said in an interview Tuesday that there is a “keeper of the book” and that the book would be handed off to a new speaker each night.

On Tuesday night, Pennsylvania state Rep. Malcolm Kenyatta trotted the book back out. “Usually Republicans want to ban books, but now they are trying to shove this down our throats,” he said.

What is Project 2025 about?

Project 2025 was created by the Heritage Foundation as a handbook for the next Republican administration , and has caught a lot of attention because it was drafted by longtime allies and former officials of the Trump administration.

The document outlines a dramatic expansion of presidential power and a plan to fire as many as 50,000 government workers to replace them with presidential loyalists. It calls for the U.S. Education Department to be shuttered, and the Homeland Security Department dismantled, with its various parts absorbed by other federal offices.

The plan says the Department of Health and Human Services should “pursue a robust agenda” to protect “the fundamental right to life.”

Democrats have falsely claimed that it also proposes to “gut Social Security.” The document contains no proposals to cut Social Security, even though the Heritage Foundation that oversaw it has long pushed for changes to the entitlement.

Where is that giant book from?

The idea to create an oversized version of Project 2025 first came about several weeks ago when Harris’ campaign manager, Julie Chavez Rodriguez, contacted McMorrow about speaking about Project 2025 at the convention, McMorrow said.

McMorrow said that she had never spoken to an arena full of people before and wanted to create a moment that would “play well both at home and in the arena.”

In an interview, she joked the book weighs as much as her 3-year-old daughter and is filled entirely with the actual text from Project 2025.

“Dropping the book on the podium played a big part in what we wanted to do,” said McMorrow.

On Wednesday, Colorado Gov. Jared Polis is expected to haul the book out, followed by U.S. Rep. Jason Crow of Colorado, according to a person familiar with the plans who disclosed them on condition of anonymity.

Who is behind Projec

What to know about the 2024 Election

Today’s news: Follow live updates from the campaign trail from the AP.
We want to hear from you: Are you a nonwhite evangelical planning to vote for Harris? Tell us why you’re supporting her and if you’re campaigning for her.
Ground Game: Sign up for AP’s weekly politics newsletter to get it in your inbox every Monday.
AP’s Role: The Associated Press is the most trusted source of information on election night, with a history of accuracy dating to 1848. Learn more.

Some of the people involved in Project 2025 are former senior administration officials with deep GOP ties. The project’s former director , Paul Dans, served as chief of staff at the U.S. Office of Personnel Management under Trump.

Trump’s former White House budget chief, Russell Vought, was a key architect of the plan and was also appointed to the Republican National Committee’s platform writing committee.

John McEntee, a former director of the White House Presidential Personnel Office in the Trump administration, was a senior adviser. McEntee told the conservative news site The Daily Wire earlier this year that Project 2025’s team would integrate a lot of its work with the campaign after the summer when Trump would announce his transition team.

What does Trump say about Project 2025?

Trump has tried to distance himself from Project 2025 and has denied knowing who is behind the plan.

Tom Homan , who oversaw U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement during the Trump administration, has cautioned against blowing the project out of proportion, arguing Washington think tanks prepare plans for new administrations that aren’t always followed.

Rep. Byron Donalds of Florida, a key Trump supporter, criticized how much Democrats are talking about the plan.

“It’s not a problem for the president because the president is already on the record saying that he has nothing to do with it,” Donalds said. “Their focus on Project 2025 is insanity.”

The decision to make Ohio Sen. JD Vance his running mate was taken by some as one more connection to Project 2025. Heritage’s President Kevin Roberts has said he’s good friends with Vance and that the Heritage Foundation had been privately rooting for him to be the VP pick.

Vance penned the foreword to Roberts’ own new book, which was set to be out in September but has now been postponed as Project 2025 hits turmoil . Roberts is holding off the release of his potentially fiery new book until after the November presidential election .

Gomez Licon reported from Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Associated Press writer Meg Kinnard and Brian Slodysko in Chicago contributed to this report.

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The Hobbit Illustrated by the Author: Illustrated by J.R.R. Tolkien (Tolkien Illustrated Editions)

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The Hobbit Illustrated by the Author: Illustrated by J.R.R. Tolkien (Tolkien Illustrated Editions) Hardcover – Special Edition, September 19, 2023

Sauron has returned. . . watch The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power Season 2 on Prime Video.

For the first time ever, a special enhanced edition of the enchanting prelude to The Lord of the Rings , illustrated throughout with over 50 sketches, drawings, paintings and maps by J.R.R. Tolkien himself and with the complete text printed in two colors.

Bilbo Baggins is a hobbit who enjoys a comfortable, unambitious life, rarely travelling further than the pantry of his hobbit-hole in Bag End. But his contentment is disturbed when the wizard, Gandalf, and a company of thirteen dwarves arrive on his doorstep one day to whisk him away on an unexpected journey ‘there and back again.’ They have a plot to raid the treasure hoard of Smaug the Magnificent, a large and very dangerous dragon . . .

Written for J.R.R. Tolkien’s own children, The Hobbit was published on 21 September 1937. With a beautiful cover design, a handful of black & white drawings and two maps by the author himself, the book became an instant success and was reprinted shortly afterwards with five color plates.

Tolkien’s own selection of finished paintings and drawings have become inseparable from his text, adorning editions of The Hobbit for more than 85 years. But the published art has afforded only a glimpse of Tolkien’s creative process, and many additional sketches, colored drawings and maps – although exhibited and published elsewhere – have never appeared within the pages of The Hobbit .

In this unique enhanced edition of Tolkien’s enchanting classic tale, the full panoply of his art is reproduced for the first time, presenting more than 50 illustrations to accompany Bilbo Baggins on his adventure ‘there and back again.’

Print length 432 pages
Language English
Publisher William Morrow
Publication date September 19, 2023
Dimensions 6 x 1.5 x 9 inches
ISBN-10 0063347539
ISBN-13 978-0063347533
See all details

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Editorial Reviews

About the author.

J.R.R. Tolkien (1892–1973) was a distinguished academic, though he is best known for writing The Hobbit , The Lord of the Rings, and The Silmarillion , plus other stories and essays. His books have been translated into over sixty languages and have sold many millions of copies worldwide.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ William Morrow; Illustrated - Enhanced - Special edition (September 19, 2023)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 432 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0063347539
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0063347533
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 2.08 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6 x 1.5 x 9 inches
#76 in Classic Literature & Fiction
#220 in Epic Fantasy (Books)
#223 in Literary Fiction (Books)

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About the author, j. r. r. tolkien.

J.R.R. Tolkien was born on 3rd January 1892. After serving in the First World War, he became best known for The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, selling 150 million copies in more than 40 languages worldwide. Awarded the CBE and an honorary Doctorate of Letters from Oxford University, he died in 1973 at the age of 81.

Customer reviews

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Customer Reviews, including Product Star Ratings help customers to learn more about the product and decide whether it is the right product for them.

To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. Instead, our system considers things like how recent a review is and if the reviewer bought the item on Amazon. It also analyzed reviews to verify trustworthiness.

Customers say

Customers find the illustrations great and the maps a welcome addition. They also describe the book as a great addition to their collection and a good gift for LOTR fans. Readers say the story is engaging and fun. They find the humor fun and witty. Customers also mention the book is easy to read and the characters are lively.

AI-generated from the text of customer reviews

Customers find the illustrations in the book great, beautiful, and seamless. They also say the book is a masterpiece that marries literature and art seamlessly.

"...or the grandeur of the Lonely Mountain, the illustrations enhance the reader's connection to the story...." Read more

"...It is well made. Comes with pertinent illustrations and print size I’d easy to read." Read more

"Got this to replace and older copy. Great illustrations and well put together. A nice addition to my library." Read more

"The book is very well built and has the added benefit of the author's illustrations ." Read more

Customers find the maps in the book a welcome addition to an overall great book.

"...The enchanting cover, clear text, breathtaking illustrations, and detailed maps collectively create a reading experience that goes beyond words...." Read more

"...Middle-earth, with its detailed geography , history, and cultures, feels alive...." Read more

"...The pages feel like they are a great quality. It came with a few maps and there is a built-in bookmark...." Read more

"...It also comes with a map . I really like it." Read more

Customers find the book selection great, and say it makes a great addition to their collection. They also say it's a good gift for fantasy and first time readers.

"As a JRR Tolkien fan this is a great addition to my collection . It is well made. Comes with pertinent illustrations and print size I’d easy to read." Read more

"...Great illustrations and well put together. A nice addition to my library ." Read more

"...is a great one, and if you’ve already read it, this is a lovely addition to your library due to the illustrations." Read more

"...a great collector's price for your library, but as both a great gift for any fantasy fan , as well as first time readers." Read more

Customers find the story engaging, epic, and imbued with a sense of history. They also appreciate the maps and meticulous attention to detail.

"...It's a celebration of Tolkien's imagination , brought to life in a visually stunning format that will undoubtedly be cherished by fans and collectors..." Read more

"...The lore is rich and immersive , offering a sense of continuity that ties Bilbo's small tale to the larger epic of "The Lord of the Rings."..." Read more

"...can easily understand and sympathize with, and the details of the world are so vivid , that I found it impossible to not imagine myself traveling..." Read more

"This lovely edition has many illustrations by the author , JRRT. It looks beautiful on a shelf or coffee table...." Read more

Customers find the book fun, witty, and bring them joy.

"...appeal of the book, creating a reading experience that is both enjoyable and visually pleasing...." Read more

" Great childrens book love the maps" Read more

"...off with, The Hobbit is the ultimate gateway drug, so to speak, fun as a casual and easy read but with just enough complexity peeking out to tempt..." Read more

"This was such a fun and witty read . A soft opening to the world of Middle-Earth. I enjoyed this for what it was...." Read more

Customers find the book easy to read, rich, and flow smoothly across the pages. They also mention that the prose is imbued with a sense of history and depth that few other books have.

"...The enchanting cover, clear text , breathtaking illustrations, and detailed maps collectively create a reading experience that goes beyond words...." Read more

"...Comes with pertinent illustrations and print size I’d easy to read ." Read more

"...The prose is rich , imbued with a sense of history and depth that few authors can match...." Read more

"...is the ultimate gateway drug, so to speak, fun as a casual and easy read but with just enough complexity peeking out to tempt one into continuing on..." Read more

Customers find the characters lively and fleshed out exactly as much as they need to be.

"...Each image is a work of art, bringing key moments and characters to life with a level of detail that complements Tolkien's vivid storytelling...." Read more

"...The characters are lively and fleshed out exactly as much as they need to be for you to get a good understanding of their personality, motives, past..." Read more

"...At least that is how I felt. Other then that, I loved the characters and that is no surprise because that is what J.R.R. Tolkien is known for...." Read more

"...I love how this book pulls me in. I love Bilbo’s character development as well." Read more

Customers appreciate the enclosed maps, ribbon bookmarks, and decorative page edging in the book.

"...It came with a few maps and there is a built-in bookmark . If you are a fan of Tolkien, you have to get this edition. It is perfect 👌..." Read more

"...You cannot go wrong. Good pictures, type easy to read and even has ribbon bookmark ." Read more

"...The recipient also enjoyed the enclosed maps, ribbon bookmarks , and decorative page edging...." Read more

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User reviews

My Hero Academia: You're Next

Izuku Midoriya, a U.A. High School student who aspires to be the best hero he can be, confronts the villain who imitates the hero he once admired. Izuku Midoriya, a U.A. High School student who aspires to be the best hero he can be, confronts the villain who imitates the hero he once admired. Izuku Midoriya, a U.A. High School student who aspires to be the best hero he can be, confronts the villain who imitates the hero he once admired.

Tensai Okamura
Yôsuke Kuroda
Kôhei Horikoshi
Kaito Ishikawa
Kayli Mills
1 User review

Top cast 11

Shoto Todoroki

Anna Scervino
(English version)

Giulio Gandini
Katsuki Bakugo

Ochaco Uraraka
Izuku Midoriya
All cast & crew
Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

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Did you know

Trivia This is the final My Hero Academia movie, as the manga ended a few days after the film's release.
Connections Spin-off from My Hero Academia (2016)

User reviews 1

October 11, 2024 (United States)
Official website
我的英雄學院劇場版：You're Next
See more company credits at IMDbPro
$19,003,869

Technical specs

Runtime 1 hour 50 minutes

More to explore

IMAGES

The Hobbit Book Review : r/TheHobbit
THE HOBBIT: Official Movie Guide [Book Review] : r/lordoftherings
The Hobbit Book Review
The Hobbit Book Review
The Hobbit Book Review
The Hobbit Book Review

VIDEO

The Hobbit Narrated by Andy Serkis Review- JRR Tolkien
THE HOBBIT / Andy Serkis Audible Narration / Why You MUST Get It! Book Review /J. R. R. Tolkien
The Hobbit (1977) Review
The Hobbit Book Review
The Hobbit Review: The Desolation of Smaug Part 1 of 6
Book Review: The Hobbit, Illustrated by Jemima Catlin in 4K HDR

COMMENTS

The Hobbit by J.R.R Tolkien... what a masterpiece : r/books
Smaug flying off to destroy Lake Town, because of the dwarves' mistake. Bard getting allied with the Elves after the treasure was supposedly left with no guardian. Thorin regaining his inherited kingdom and treasure, but he turned out exactly like Smaug: twisted and selfish.
The Hobbit by Tolkien [Book Review] : r/Fantasy
the hobbit After being reminded countless times how good of an author Tolkien is and reading his books are somewhat of a compulsion if you dare call yourself a lover of English fantasy literature, I finally decided to dive into the world of middle earth, and picked up The Hobbit.
My Complete Review of JRR Tolkien's The Hobbit Chapter 1
In my Humblest opinion Tolkien's The Hobbit is more than just a light hearted story made for his children, its extends out towards a wider audience aswell with is ancient and mythical feel that feels Profound. From memorable characters like Bilbo, Thorin, Gandalf and many more they all serve to well to the plot and is why the story is heavily ...
A Summary and Analysis of J. R. R. Tolkien's The Hobbit
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University) The Hobbit is one of the biggest-selling books of all time. An estimated 100 million people have read Tolkien's classic children's novel since it was first published in 1937. The story of its origins, and Tolkien's supposed invention of the word 'hobbit' (of which more below), are well-known.
The Hobbit (The Lord of the Rings, #0) by J.R.R. Tolkien
The prologue to a great trilogy, simple and charming, The Hobbit is a great book by itself. Finally, this review is of a re-visit to The Hobbit, after a hiatus of perhaps 30 years. I rarely will re-read a book, there are just so many great books and so little time - but The Hobbit is one of those special works that can be savored and enjoyed ...
The Hobbit Review: An Exciting Fantasy Story
Book Title: The Hobbit Book Description: The Hobbit is an exciting and lighthearted novel in which the reader follows reluctant hero Bilbo Baggins and a group of dwarves on an incredible adventure. Book Author: J.R.R. Tolkien Book Edition: First Edition Book Format: Hardcover Publisher - Organization: George Allen & Unwin Date published: September 21, 1937 ISBN: -684-12826-1
The Hobbit Book Review
Language-. - minimal. -perhaps the occasional mild swear word but Tolkien's insults are much more creative than that! Violence-. - as much as could be expected for a fantasy book. -hand-to-hand combat but nothing overly gory. Romance-none. Spiritual-. - Gandalf is a wizard but the story does not rely heavily on magic.
The Hobbit at 80: What Reviewers Said About Tolkien in 1937
3 minute read. W hen the first edition of The Hobbit: or, There And Back Again was first published — 80 years ago, on Sept. 21, 1937 — C.S. Lewis famously called the book a "marvellous ...
Review: The Hobbit
Review: The Hobbit - J R R Tolkien. With precious few weeks left before the year is out, and having set myself the task of reading at least 10 of the BBC Big Reads before 2014 draws to a close, after finishing Emma I soon began The Hobbit. Chosen largely because of a number of recommendations and partly because of its length; at around 250 ...
Review
As the book closes where it began, in the quiet little hobbit-hole ("and that means comfort") I found myself looking forward to introducing Bilbo and Gandalf to my children. They are still too young, but the years are coming when they will perhaps still still enough for me to read to them the tale of Bilbo and the trolls Bert, Tom, and Bill ...
Behind the Pages
When you begin reading The Hobbit, don't expect the flashy drawn out fight scenes and plot twists you'll see in modern day fantasy. Written in 1937, the style of writing is vastly different but has aged well over the years. Behind the Pages reviews The Hobbit.
Book Review: The Hobbit
The Hobbitby J.R.R. TolkienMy rating: 5 / 5Genre: Classic fantasy. This is not going to be a structured review with a recommendation or warning to stay away. It's really just going to be my musings on my first foray into written Tolkien. First, let me give a reference point-as I said, I've never read any Tolkien before this.
The Hobbit Book Review
First off, the story is unbearably cliche. Yes, it was one of the earlier high fantasy novels and thus created many of the standards for following novels, but all of the creatures (except maybe the titular hobbits) can be found in most other fantasy works, leading to a feeling of unoriginality. Second, the pacing is weird and the plot structure ...
Book Reviews: The Hobbit, by J. R. R. Tolkien (Updated for 2021)
Bilbo Baggins is a hobbit who enjoys a comfortable, unambitious life, rarely traveling any farther than his pantry or cellar. But his contentment is disturbed when the wizard Gandalf and a company of dwarves arrive on his doorstep one day to whisk him away on an adventure. They have launched a plot to raid the treasure hoard guarded by Smaug ...
The Hobbit, Book Review : r/books
This book is sure to beyond satisfy any Tolkien fan looking for an expansion on the story of Middle Earth. The story revolves around Bilbo Baggins, a homely hobbit of The Shire who just wants to live a calm and peaceful life. One day a wizard named Gandalf came to Bilbo's door with 13 dwarves and told Bilbo of an adventure he was to take part ...
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The Hobbit trilogy by director Peter Jackson was a low-key prequel to the hugely successful LOTR franchise from the early 2000s. The franchise received a lukewarm reception from Tolkien fans who thought the movies could have adapted the available lore better than they did.. RELATED: 10 Books That Were Better Than Their Film Adaptations While the majority of folks seem to take the movies with a ...
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Book Review
Review of J.R.R. Tolkien's classic children's story, 'The Hobbit', set in Middle-earth, which follows the hapless Bilbo Baggins on his unexpected adventure with Thorin Oakenshield and his company of dwarves to reclaim their treasure from the dragon, Smaug.
The Hobbit Trilogy: GOOD or NOT?
For a bit of background, I've always been a big fan of both Tolkien and fantasy movies. So when I heard about the Hobbit movies coming out, I was so excited. Wh
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Read The Hobbit for the first time. : r/books
I enjoyed the Silmarillion, have read it several times, more of a history book than an adventure. I love the context it provides for some of references made in both the Hobbit and LotR. They recently released an audio version read by Andy Serkis as a companion to his readings of the Hobbit and the LotR, looking forward to listening to it.
User Reviews
Although this book is a must-read for middle-school-age kids, about a hobbit and some dwarves' journey to get gold back from an evil dragon, it's probably more violent than you remember, and there are tobacco references and some drinking. Violence 7/10: Fantasy violence gets more and more frequent and intense the further you get into the book.
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The Hobbit Book Review : r/TheHobbit
The Hobbit Book Review Locked post. New comments cannot be posted. Share Add a Comment. Be the first to comment Nobody's responded to this post yet. Add your thoughts and get the conversation going. ... This subreddit is a space for the Tolkien nerds of reddit to debate and discuss the whole Tolkien mythos. We emphasise serious discussion here ...
The Hobbit Illustrated by the Author: Illustrated by J.R.R. Tolkien
Sauron has returned. . . watch The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power Season 2 on Prime Video.. For the first time ever, a special enhanced edition of the enchanting prelude to The Lord of the Rings, illustrated throughout with over 50 sketches, drawings, paintings and maps by J.R.R. Tolkien himself and with the complete text printed in two colors.
My Hero Academia: You're Next (2024)
My Hero Academia: You're Next: Directed by Tensai Okamura. With Kaito Ishikawa, Yûki Kaji, Kayli Mills, Kenta Miyake. Izuku Midoriya, a U.A. High School student who aspires to be the best hero he can be, confronts the villain who imitates the hero he once admired.