Tolkien: A Dictionary

A Helpful Tool
The Tolkien Dictionary by David Day is a powerhouse of information on the world of J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. There is a disclaimer that all it contains may not be "canon", but for the most part, I doubt I notice. The book itself is a newer print of a tome that has been around under one title of another since my college days. It's an A to Z listing of lots of topics pertaining to Tolkien's Middle Earth. It isn't a game product or official play aid, but I find leafing through the Dictionary a good way to learn more about Middle Earth.
The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings are novels and although each contains much additional material on Middle Earth in the appendices, the body of the book is a story. With Tolkien A Dictionary the emphasis is on explaining what a hobbit or a nazgul is. How do all the names for various elven groups relate to each other? Is a Noldor the same as a Sindar and if not how do they differ?  Why are there so few wizards in Middle Earth? Answers to these and many other questions can be found in the pages of this little volume.
Pictured on the front is a group of Woses, a wild woodland people living naked in the Forest of Druadan who excelled at woodcraft and assisted the Rohirrim in breaking the siege of Gondor. There are entries on the Forest of Druadan, the Rohirrim and Gondor if you need additional explanation. There is more, much more between the end-paper maps of Arda (High Elven name for the whole world including Middle Earth and the Undying Lands). I find Tolkien A Dictionary a very helpful tool in gaining understanding of Tolkien's world for both further enjoyment of the stories and for use as a referee running a game set in Tolkien's Middle Earth. And it's delightfully illustrated!
The relationship between Tolkien's fiction and the White Box and the hobby in general is complicated and confusing at times. Despite Gary Gygax' rumored denial that Tolkien's work had much influence on White Box (comparatively speaking, probably true), I think the popularity of the two are intertwined. Both White Box and the works of J.R.R. Tolkien were faddishly popular on college campuses when I was a student. Whether one started with reading Tolkien or started by playing White Box, one inevitably led to the other. Hardly anyone I knew on campus wasn't a fan of both. For me personally, interest in one, feeds interest in the other, always has. This isn't to say White Box is a game of Tolkien's fiction, it is more than that and it is easy to see the influence of many other authors and game forms in it's DNA.