Since the movie marketing machine of U.S. economic imperialism sprang into action there is little need to explain much about the Lord of the Rings to people. I am one of the lucky one's who got to read it without any preconceptions of what the world and the characters looked like. Even before the movies, it was one of the most widely revered books written in the English language. It won a number of polls on the greatest book of the twentieth century, and if I were to consider a book in isolation from the culture in which it exists...