It has long been recognised that memory plays a crucial role in the works of Augustine of Hippo (d. 430). It is therefore all the more surprising that this book is the first monograph dedicated exclusively to the analysis of Augustine's notion of memory as such. More precisely, Hochschild intends to demonstrate that memory is at the centre of Augustine's anthropology (pp. 4, 152, 186). Her method is historical and ‘largely exegetical’ (p. 4), rather than superimposing a preconceived systematic on Augustine's thought (pp. 66, 225). This is a valid approach; one would only wish that Hochschild had defined the anachronistic term ‘anthropology’ in its applicability to Augustine's works. The book is divided into three parts. Part i (pp. 7–66) offers an overview of the philosophical tradition on memory before Augustine, focusing on Plato, Aristotle and Plotinus. Its aim is to illuminate, first, the close connection of Augustine's thought to this tradition, and, second, to demonstrate his originality by which a ‘genuinely plotinian spiritual language is put to the use of a distinctively incarnational model of knowledge of God’ (p. 3, cf. p. 133). Hochschild is particularly to be applauded for her recognition that Augustine's thought can never be fully explained by one predecessor alone (pp. 62, 66, cf. pp. 32f.). Part ii (pp. 69–33) is dedicated to Augustine's earlier works, from the Contra academicos to De musica. Although dealing only intermittently with memoria, these works nevertheless lay the foundation for his more mature thought on the matter (pp. 65, 225, 229). Hochschild highlights De musica as a watershed because here for the first time Augustine embeds his anthropology firmly into a moral and cosmological context (pp. 127–9, 133). In Part iii (pp. 135–224) Hochschild has a close look at the Confessions and On Trinity, the works in which Augustine develops his mature thought on memory most extensively and remarkably consistently (p. 189). From the many important and illuminating observations I wish to highlight her description of the Church as a ‘hermeneutic body’ that manages to combine the love of truth shared by all with a hermeneutic diversity that allows multiple approaches to Scripture (pp. 180–2), the tension between our memory of the divine in our soul and the fact that all our learning is dependent on the world around us (p. 186f.), and how this tension can be resolved through the incarnation (pp. 190–5). Hochschild concludes that for Augustine the central role of memory lies in its ability to connect the temporal and transient with the eternal and unchanging (pp. 207f., 219–24, 226), while not being able to resolve in this life ‘the dialectical play of knowledge and love of what is possessed, yet not possessed’ (p. 232). These exciting results trigger the question whether one could find echoes of them in Augustine's other later works and what the implications could be. This is a thorough and imaginative study that will benefit and stimulate the expert and will be an indispensable item on any interested student's study list. Hochschild is to be congratulated on her fine achievement.