There is much for many audiences in this wonderful addition to the Critical Language and Literacy series. Though primarily an ethnographic account of an Evangelical Christian language school in Poland, English Teaching and Evangelical Mission is a multi-layered text with connotations that extend beyond the proffering and enticements of faith. For one, there is the author himself and the unique talents and experiences he brings to this project. Bill Johnston, a professor of comparative literature at Indiana University, is a renowned and multiple award-winning translator of Polish literature. His translation of Wiesław Myśliwski's Stone upon Stone (2010), as one prominent example, received the PEN 2012 Translation Prize, culminating in the Officer's Cross of the Order of Merit, awarded by the President of the Republic of Poland. Johnston expertly knows the language and national context of which he writes, and he applies a meticulous wordsmith's attention to the lexical tempo and detail with which he describes the people and events at Lighthouse School as well as broader transitions and re-alignments in the sociopolitical and religious landscape of Polish society.

The depth of contextualization is indeed impressive. For those interested in religion and culture, Johnston outlines the historical prominence of Catholicism in Poland, its relative submission under communism and its resurgence after the break-up of the Soviet Union and Eastern Bloc. As background to Lighthouse School, Johnston also introduces readers to aspects of religious history less commonly known: i.e. the longstanding presence and diversity of Polish Protestantism, and more relevant to the story at hand, the tensions and attractions that Evangelical Christianity currently poses for one of Europe's most Catholic nations. Johnston draws attention to new forms of religious syncretism, for example, an emergent charismatic Catholicism. At a more local and personal level, Johnston's interview data reveal religious Poles who find themselves in both 'camps' at once, negotiating and reconciling seemingly contradictory identity positions, as in the case of Pippa, a devout member of a Catholic congregation, on the one hand, and a committed evangelical missionary, on the other.