Loyola's so-called Autobiography, known also as Acta, is without doubt ‘a seminal text,’ as the author calls it, for Jesuit spirituality and history. The author gives it ‘another look’ by re-reading it as a mirror of Ignatius of Loyola's vainglory, which had been proposed by O'Rourke Boyle, and as a mirror of Jesuit apostolic spirituality, which had been offered by John W. O'Malley. The author's original contribution is an appreciation of the two writings of Luke, his Gospel and the Acts in order to help to interpret the theological perspectives of Ignatius in Acta. Although the author acknowledges O'Rourke Boyle's thesis that the Acta is not an autobiography, he reads the text as if Loyola actually wrote it. This approach is unacceptable from the philological perspective of the history of transmission of this text.

Even though the author believes that the premises of the book are sound, his work lacks a proper historical perspective on early Jesuit history, which should explain how the plan to found the Society of Jesus developed and how the order itself went through different stages of institutional development from its formal approval in 1540. The vision of Loyola and his companions of Paris changed dramatically over time and was later influenced or even changed by important Jesuits who were not part of the foundational group, such as Polanco, Nadal and Ribadeneyra. The author does interact abundantly with recent scholarship on all the subjects that he deals with in the book, but his knowledge of the primary sources is insufficient and comes almost exclusively from the secondary sources. Indeed, the author does not provide the parallel reading of the Acta in the context of a number of contemporary texts by Polanco, Laínez, Rodrigues, Ribadeneyra and others, who wrote on Ignatius and the beginnings of the Society. Without these ‘synoptic’ texts, the reading of the Acta, risks historical distortion. As far as I noticed, there is no archival document (either unknown or, at least, little known) that the author uses to make his argument. Only a few published primary sources are quoted directly. The actual text of the Acta is not provided in its entirety but paraphrased by the author in the historical present. The author assumes that the reader knows the text of the Acta, as well as all the references to the Jesuit reality. Thus the book's readership is limited to those who know this reality very well. Rather than a historical monograph, it reads like a learned meditation/reflection shared with those interested in Jesuit spirituality.