In this sixth volume of The History of Middle-earth the story reaches The Lord of the Rings. In The Return of the Shadow (an abandoned title for the first volume) Christopher Tolkien describes, with full citation of the earliest notes, outline plans, and narrative drafts, the intricate evolution of The Fellowship of the Ring and the gradual emergence of the conceptions that transformed what J.R.R. Tolkien for long believed would be a far shorter book,...

In The War of the Ring Christopher Tolkien takes up the story of the writing of The Lord of the Rings with the Battle of Helm's Deep and the drowning of Isengard by the Ents. This is followed by an account of how Frodo, Sam and Gollum were finally brought to the Pass of Kirith Ungol, at which point J.R.R. Tolkien wrote at the time: 'I have got the hero into such a fix that not even an author will be able to extricate him without labour and difficulty'....

A classic tragedy about the lust for power and its ultimate bloody consequences. Macbeth is a Scottish war hero whose insane ambition unleashes a cycle of violence. Prompted by the supernatural prophecy of three witches, Macbeth is then goaded by his lady into slaying King Duncan in order to assume the throne. He plunges further into murder and moral decay to keep the unsteady crown on his head.