Peter Jackson's film version of J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings trilogy - and the accompanying Rings-related paraphernalia and publicity - has played a unique role in the disemmination of Tolkien's imaginative creation to the masses. Yet, for most readers and viewers, the underlying meaning of Middle-earth has remained obscure. Bradley Birzer has remedied that with this fresh study. In J.R.R. Tolkien's Sanctifying Myth: Understanding Middle-earth, Birzer reveals the surprisingly specific religious symbolism that permeates Tolkien's Middle-earth legendarium. He also explores the social and political views that motivated the Oxford don, ultimately situating Tolkien within the Christian humanist tradition represented by Thomas More and T.S. Eliot, Dante and C.S. Lewis. Birzer argues that through the genre of myth Tolkien created a world that is essentially truer than the one we think we see around us everyday, a world that transcends the colorless disenchantment of our postmodern age.

In January 2020, the world lost not only one of the greatest drummers, but also one of the most insightful lyricists. And a brilliant writer.

Though Neil Peart was universally lauded as drummer for legendary rock band Rush, few studies have been devoted to his writings. Yet, Peart was very much a man of his words. He wrote lyrics, travelogues, essays, cultural criticism, short stories, and fantasy novels.

The themes in his writings are timeless: personal journeys, exploration, excellence, growth, philosophy, art, satisfaction and happiness, religion, politics, individualism, natural history, life, love, loss, redemption, and beauty.

Peart wanted every person to persevere through individual trials, find unique gifts and abilities and, ultimately, true happiness. He did not just profess such things; he lived them.

Never satisfied with second best or any form of defeat, Peart challenged himself to live up to his own philosophy. And he always succeeded with grace, which earned him even more fervent admirers.

Since his death in 2020, Neil Peart has continued to inspire thousands through his music, his words, and his example.

This book-revised and expanded to incorporate Peart's final years-carefully examines the influence that his life, his witness, and his words have had on others. Neil Peart lived life to the fullest, and he made us each better for it.

includes some of the strongest analysis of Peart's lyrics that you'll find, and does a rigorous job of nailing down the tenets of Peart's ever-evolving philosophy.-PROG Magazine

In January 2020, the world lost not only one of the greatest drummers, but also one of the most insightful lyricists. And a brilliant writer.

Though Neil Peart was universally lauded as drummer for legendary rock band Rush, few studies have been devoted to his writings. Yet, Peart was very much a man of his words. He wrote lyrics, travelogues, essays, cultural criticism, short stories, and fantasy novels.

The themes in his writings are timeless: personal journeys, exploration, excellence, growth, philosophy, art, satisfaction and happiness, religion, politics, individualism, natural history, life, love, loss, redemption, and beauty.

Peart wanted every person to persevere through individual trials, find unique gifts and abilities and, ultimately, true happiness. He did not just profess such things; he lived them.

Never satisfied with second best or any form of defeat, Peart challenged himself to live up to his own philosophy. And he always succeeded with grace, which earned him even more fervent admirers.

Since his death in 2020, Neil Peart has continued to inspire thousands through his music, his words, and his example.

This book-revised and expanded to incorporate Peart's final years-carefully examines the influence that his life, his witness, and his words have had on others. Neil Peart lived life to the fullest, and he made us each better for it.

includes some of the strongest analysis of Peart's lyrics that you'll find, and does a rigorous job of nailing down the tenets of Peart's ever-evolving philosophy.-PROG Magazine

Drawing on his considerable study of Carroll's published and unpublished writings, historian Bradley J. Birzer masterfully captures a man of supreme intellect, imagination, integrity, and accomplishment. Born a bastard, Carroll nonetheless became the best educated (and wealthiest) Founder. The Marylander's insight, Birzer shows, allowed him to recognize the necessity of independence from Great Britain well before most other Founders. Indeed, Carroll's analysis of the situation in the colonies in the run-up to the Revolution was original and brilliant--yet almost all historians have ignored it. Reflecting his classical and liberal education, the man who would be called The Last of the Romans advocated a proper understanding of the American Revolution as deeply rooted in the Western tradition. Carroll even left his mark on the U.S. Constitution despite not assuming his elected position to the Constitutional Convention: by inspiring the creation of the U.S. Senate.American Cicero ably demonstrates how Carroll's Catholicism was integral to his thought. Oppressed because of his faith--Maryland was the most anti-Catholic of the original thirteen colonies--Carroll became the only Roman Catholic to sign the Declaration of Independence and helped legitimize Catholicism in the young American republic. What's more, Birzer brilliantly reassesses the most controversial aspects of Charles Carroll: his aristocratic position and his critiques of democracy. As Birzer shows, Carroll's fears of extreme democracy had ancient and noble roots, and his arguments about the dangers of democracy influenced Alexis de Tocqueville's magisterial work Democracy in America.American Cicero reveals why Founders such as John Adams assumed that Charles Carroll would one day be considered among the greats--and also why history has largely forgotten him.

Andrew Jackson was controversial in his time--and even more controversial in our own. Indian fighter, ardent patriot, hero of the War of 1812, the very embodiment of America's democratic and frontier spirit, Andrew Jackson was an iconic figure.

Today, Jackson is criticized and reviled - condemned as a slave-owner, repudiated as the president who dispatched the Indians down the Trail of Tears, dropped with embarrassment by the Democratic Party, and demanded by many to be removed from the twenty-dollar bill.

Who is the real Andrew Jackson? The beloved Old Hickory whom Americans once revered? Or the villain who has become a prime target of the Social Justice Warriors?

Using letters, diaries, newspaper columns, and notes, historian Bradley Birzer provides a fresh and enlightening perspective on Jackson --unvarnished, true to history, revealing why President Donald Trump sees Andrew Jackson as a political role model, and illustrating the strong parallels between the anxieties of Jacksonian America and the anxieties of the Hillbilly Elegy voting bloc of today.

In this brilliant new book, Bradley Birzer makes the case that Jackson was...

• The epitome of the American frontier republican.
• Passionately devoted to individual liberty.
• A staunch proponent of Christian morality.
• Not only dedicated but also vital to the preservation of the Union.
• A significant and influential role model to President Donald J. Trump.

In Defense of Andrew Jackson sets the record straight on our seventh president, revealing a radically new but historically accurate perspective on Jackson.

I'm not an Andrew Jackson fan, but I'm definitely a Bradley Birzer fan. His case for Old Hickory is as strong as any I've seen and deserves to be reckoned with.- THOMAS E. WOODS JR., author of The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History.

Most discussion of Andrew Jackson falls into predictable ruts, defaulting automatically to clichés that reflect more on our own time than his. Whether America is entering another 'Jacksonian' period depends upon understanding the first one more clearly, and we have Bradley Birzer to thank for taking up a spirited defense of this complicated man and his legacy. - STEVEN F. HAYWARD, author of The Age of Reagan: The Conservative Counterrevolution 1980-1989.

Liberal revisionists have pounded Andrew Jackson down to the point where Democrats are ashamed to admit he founded their party. In Defense of Andrew Jackson sets the record straight on America's first populist president. - JAMES S. ROBBINS, author of Erasing America: Losing Our Future by Destroying Our Past.

As a man and a military hero, Andrew Jackson is as American as they come. But in this timely biography, Bradley Birzer has managed to peel back layers of cliché and reveal our seventh president as a more complex human being than current textbooks allow. - GLEAVES WHITNEY, director of Grand Valley State University's Hauenstein Center for Presidential Studies.

Drawing on his considerable study of Carroll's published and unpublished writings, historian Bradley J. Birzer masterfully captures a man of supreme intellect, imagination, integrity, and accomplishment. Born a bastard, Carroll nonetheless became the best educated (and wealthiest) Founder. The Marylander's insight, Birzer shows, allowed him to recognize the necessity of independence from Great Britain well before most other Founders. Indeed, Carroll's analysis of the situation in the colonies in the run-up to the Revolution was original and brilliant--yet almost all historians have ignored it. Reflecting his classical and liberal education, the man who would be called The Last of the Romans advocated a proper understanding of the American Revolution as deeply rooted in the Western tradition. Carroll even left his mark on the U.S. Constitution despite not assuming his elected position to the Constitutional Convention: by inspiring the creation of the U.S. Senate.

American Cicero ably demonstrates how Carroll's Catholicism was integral to his thought. Oppressed because of his faith--Maryland was the most anti-Catholic of the original thirteen colonies--Carroll became the only Roman Catholic to sign the Declaration of Independence and helped legitimize Catholicism in the young American republic.

What's more, Birzer brilliantly reassesses the most controversial aspects of Charles Carroll: his aristocratic position and his critiques of democracy. As Birzer shows, Carroll's fears of extreme democracy had ancient and noble roots, and his arguments about the dangers of democracy influenced Alexis de Tocqueville's magisterial work Democracy in America.

American Cicero reveals why Founders such as John Adams assumed that Charles Carroll would one day be considered among the greats--and also why history has largely forgotten him.

A sequel of sorts to Bradley Birzer's Beyond Tenebrae (Angelico Press, 2019), Mythic Realms seeks to pursue excellences in the last hundred years of literature and film. Still rooted in Christian Humanism and Burke's moral imagination, Birzer offers here a series of autobiographical vignettes, following which he analyzes fiction from Willa Cather to J.R.R. Tolkien to Stephen King to Frank Miller, and considers everything from the novel to the graphic novel. From the world of film he explores the works of John Ford, Alfred Hitchcock, Roland Joffé, and Christopher Nolan, while not neglecting popular TV series such as Star Trek, X-Files, Daredevil, and Stranger Things. In the end, though, after these many thought-provoking investigations, Birzer concludes that all things come down to reverence-both mythic and real-for the Blessed Mother and, especially, for her son, Jesus Christ.

A sequel of sorts to Bradley Birzer's Beyond Tenebrae (Angelico Press, 2019), Mythic Realms seeks to pursue excellences in the last hundred years of literature and film. Still rooted in Christian Humanism and Burke's moral imagination, Birzer offers here a series of autobiographical vignettes, following which he analyzes fiction from Willa Cather to J.R.R. Tolkien to Stephen King to Frank Miller, and considers everything from the novel to the graphic novel. From the world of film he explores the works of John Ford, Alfred Hitchcock, Roland Joffé, and Christopher Nolan, while not neglecting popular TV series such as Star Trek, X-Files, Daredevil, and Stranger Things. In the end, though, after these many thought-provoking investigations, Birzer concludes that all things come down to reverence-both mythic and real-for the Blessed Mother and, especially, for her son, Jesus Christ.

Emerging from two decades of the Great Depression and the New Deal and facing the rise of radical ideologies abroad, the American Right seemed beaten, broken, and adrift in the early 1950s. Although conservative luminaries such as T. S. Eliot, William F. Buckley Jr., Leo Strauss, and Eric Voegelin all published important works at this time, none of their writings would match the influence of Russell Kirk's 1953 masterpiece The Conservative Mind. This seminal book became the intellectual touchstone for a reinvigorated movement and began a sea change in Americans' attitudes toward traditionalism.

In Russell Kirk, Bradley J. Birzer investigates the life and work of the man known as the founder of postwar conservatism in America. Drawing on papers and diaries that have only recently become available to the public, Birzer presents a thorough exploration of Kirk's intellectual roots and development. The first to examine the theorist's prolific writings on literature and culture, this magisterial study illuminates Kirk's lasting influence on figures such as T. S. Eliot, William F. Buckley Jr., and Senator Barry Goldwater -- who persuaded a reluctant Kirk to participate in his campaign for the presidency in 1964.

While several books examine the evolution of postwar conservatism and libertarianism, surprisingly few works explore Kirk's life and thought in detail. This engaging biography not only offers a fresh and thorough assessment of one of America's most influential thinkers but also reasserts his humane vision in an increasingly inhumane time.