Sumptuously produced, this book reveals the richness and variety of Jewish manuscript illumination from the ninth to the nineteenth century. All the illuminations featured are from the British Library's own collection, and are accompanied by short captions, in the style of an exhibition. Most of the images come from Bibles or prayer books, but other genres of text are also represented, including books of law and philosophy and marriage contracts, as well as a superbly illustrated northern French miscellany from the late thirteenth century and a little-known Fathnama (Book of Conquest) from late seventeenth- or early eighteenth-century Iran. The geographical range of the manuscripts is as impressive as the chronological, as is the variety of styles, all reflecting the prevailing cultural matrix. Thus northern French and German paintings are in a Gothic style, while other examples declare to the most casual glance their origin in Spain or Italy, or in Muslim lands. A distinctive feature is the use of micrography, the creation of images, some of which are mesmerically beautiful, out of texts written in tiny letters. This is an extreme case of the marriage of text to image which is a theme underlying this book. The invention of printing, which was enthusiastically seized upon by Jews, did not put an end to the production of fine manuscripts (some striking images in the book were created in the eighteenth century). Among the many stories embedded in the captions is that of the formation of the library's collection of Hebrew books, which is one of the finest in the world in quality, even if in terms of mere numbers it cannot compare with the collections of the Russian National Library, the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York or the Jewish National and University Library in Jerusalem. Some of the items shown were part of the Harleian purchase in 1753. Only one Hebrew Bible was among the manuscripts given to the British Museum by George iv in 1823, but six more were acquired from the sale of the library of his brother, the duke of Sussex, in 1844. More recent acquisitions came from Jewish collections like those of David Sassoon and Rabbi Moses Gaster. This handsome volume serves as a splendid introduction to the British Library's Hebrew manuscripts in particular, and to the subject of Jewish manuscript illumination in general.