This well-detailed study examines the Student Christian Movement (SCM), an international federation of mission organizations that was an instrumental vehicle for the foreign mission enthusiasm of the turn of the twentieth century. The volume, in some ways, connects to a body of work that flourished in the early twentieth century: the organizational histories and biographical accounts of the Anglo-American Protestant student missionary movement. Looking backward at the previous decades’ outpouring of overseas evangelization, the staff of mission groups produced these older histories at a time of reckoning for Christian internationalists as they contended with a shift from a missiology that accompanied the march of empire to an increasingly antiracist and ecumenical Christianity.

Russell's book, supplementing such institutional celebrations of progressive missiology and beloved personalities, revisits the material with a very contemporary historiographic lens, re-centering these narratives around the labor and leadership of women. Russell's volume distinguishes itself in the contemporary historiography of women's mission, which has flourished in the wake of Jane Hunter's Gospel of Gentility, in its focus on a mixed-sex coalition that carried out the full complement of tasks for global religious outreach: direct proselytization, the establishment and support of institutions aimed to meet the pastoral and practical needs of young adults, and executive management of a sprawling network of independently operating organizations, among other responsibilities. The book marks a new direction from accounts that detail the individual women's groups connected to the “dizzying array” (xi) of mission sponsors and student organizations that formed the SCM.

This in itself makes it a worthwhile contribution to the American Society of Missiology Series, which published this volume. Russell provides a reminder of the considerable reach of the SCM, which operated through the coordinated efforts of the YWCA, YMCA, Student Volunteer Movement, World Student Christian Federation, and numerous national affiliates. He paints a more complex portrait of the dynamics of gender relations in the student mission movement than do studies that write off mixed-sex groups as male dominated. Lay leadership, Russell argues, uniquely gave women “the opportunity to become leaders.” At the same time, he notes, the women did not use their platform to agitate for change in “existing ecclesiastical structures” (20). The evidence provided in this volume gives little sense that they found these structures to be stifling to their spiritual, personal, or professional growth. In addition to these insights into gender, by illuminating a sprawling federation directed at global evangelization, Russell supplies a reminder that overseas mission was not primarily a regional venture, as one might conclude by the preponderance of studies of Christianity in East Asia. After all, the watchword of the movement was the evangelization of the world in this generation, and the extent to which this ambition was put into motion is evident as readers follow the travels of SCM staff across the entirety of Asia, as well as continental Europe, South America, and Africa.

To highlight women's contributions to the SCM, Russell structures the book primarily around a typology of workers in the mission infrastructure, describing the labors of executive leaders, traveling secretaries, and conference speakers as well as pioneers in ecumenicalism, intellectual life, and the women's movement. Biographical portraits illustrate these typologies, enabling Russell to underscore the importance of individuals such as Clara Ruth Rouse and Michi Kawai, whose former prominence in mission circles has not translated to ongoing historical attention. Taken as a whole, the book gives a convincing demonstration that not only did women organically assume positions of leadership and influence in the programming, management, and intellectual life of this organization, but that they acted as partners with, rather than subordinates to, men in these ventures.

The volume relies on archival research largely drawn from organizational minutes, correspondence, and the institutional histories that have languished on the shelves of divinity libraries. It stands less as a “hidden” history of women's achievement and more as a forgotten one, a story that has been supplanted by more thematic recent studies. The decision to prioritize examination of institutional structures and biographical sketches precludes placing the story of the SCM into sustained conversation with scholarship that has examined relationships between the turn-of-the-century Anglo-American missionary movement and global women's movements, colonialism and independence movements, and the evolution of Christian internationalism. For that reason, the book may better serve as a reference work, rather than a starting point, for scholars investigating women in mission, international ecumenicalism, and Christian student groups. Nevertheless, the account shows the value of a renewed attention to the SCM, and it points to important areas for future inquiry by indicating the importance of this history to the study of contemporary global networks of student religious groups as well as debates over women's positions in religious leadership.