Review of "The Hero With A Thousand Faces"

If you are interested in Myth then this is a great book to read, but I would do a few things first. First, you will want to try and read up on some of the myths he looks at in this work. These include Greek, Christian, Jewish etc and works like Dante and The Kalevala to name a few. It will be easy to follow him if you are not reading about them for the first time. Second, I would read up a little bit about Sigmund Freud, maybe just his wiki, since this is also a large part of this work.

As for the book it self. It is about 330 pages, but there are many pictures and diagrams mixed in. So although, it is not a long read it is not the lights read. He does use a number or large words and if you do not have a back around in "the arts" you may have to look a few up. That being said the general ideas in the book are not to hard to understand and in this way it is not a hard read.

This book will make you think. It makes interesting points on a chapter by chapter base and in the over all thesis. Thus, anyone who reads the book a second time would get even more out of it. I will not give to much away since I think you should read it, but the over all thesis is that myth not matter the time or place share common characteristics.

If your faith is part of the Judeo-Christian tradition my should know that he treats your believes as myth, but in so doing will make you think about them in a good way.

One final note. This book was one of George Lucas's major guides for the Star Wars movies so if for no other reason than that you should read it.