This important collection of essays by scholars in various specialties within liturgical studies reflects the broad scope and depth of scholarship that characterise the work of Bryan Spinks in whose honour they are published. In the book's first section, ‘Early Church and eastern traditions’, Robert Taft provides the reader with a deeper view of the worship life of ancient Constantinople and John Chrysostom's pastoral-liturgical ministry, Anthony Gelston brings us the latest on the East Syrian anaphoral tradition, and Paul Bradshaw reviews the variety and complexity of the evidence for baptismal anointing in the patristic age. Daniel Findikyan provides a glimpse into the Armenian Church's ritual opening of the church door on Palm Sunday to give us a deeper understanding of its place in the Lenten liturgy of that Church and Gregory Woolfenden's posthumously published paper on the nature and function of the day hours challenges the reader to learn from the tradition how to shape these hours of prayer to suit our own time and place. One sees in this portion of the collection a picture of Spinks's own work, which analyses the historical documents with great precision and with an eye to knowing better how to serve God in liturgical prayer today. The second section, concerned with patristic and Reformation material, includes the analysis by Gordon Jeanes of the place of the supper narrative in the eucharist. His observations on the absence of the narrative from the most ancient anaphoras and from the contemporary use of the Church of the East provide the context in which he discusses the narrative's significance in Reformation debates. The final section on the liturgical reform includes the important article by Maxwell Johnson on the continuing search for a normative ordo. While his study deals specifically with Lutheran worship his insights will be very useful for many who grapple with the issue of the ‘lex orandi’. This section of the book encourages the reader to pursue liturgical reform in all our Churches by highlighting such topics as the preference for directness of form over ritualistic obfuscation, and the need to pursue the projects of inculturation, ecumenism and participatory enactment. The essays by Johnson and John Witvliet, while focused particularly upon Lutheran and Evangelical concerns respectively, will be found very useful by any liturgical scholar of the twenty-first century who takes the liturgical task of his or her Church seriously. This book is to be recommended for the breadth of its focus and the depth of its analysis in which the fruits of historical study and theological analysis are brought to bear on the contemporary challenges experienced by worshippers in this current age.