This is an important book that should be consulted by a wide range of scholars interested in the shape and influence of German theology in the nineteenth century. It marks the ablest treatment in English of the Protestant ‘Tübingen School’ and the influence of idealist philosophy in theology since Horton Harris's older The Tübingen School: a historical and theological investigation of the school of F. C. Baur. Indeed, Zachhuber's book supplants Harris's by offering a more engaging, argument-driven treatment of the material. Among Zachhuber's arguments, two strike me as particularly noteworthy. First, he desires to dispense with the idea that Friedrich Schleiermacher was the ‘father of liberal theology’. The truest innovator in the early nineteenth century was in fact Ferdinand Christian Baur, who was more indebted to Hegel, other idealist currents of thought, and the methods of modern historiography than he was to Schleiermacher. Baur set modern theology – or at least large tracts thereof – on the path toward becoming wissenschaftlich in a purely historicist sense. The idealist desire for the unity of knowledge, paradoxically, was both furthered and injured under Baur's influence, even if theologians kept earnestly extolling it for the rest of the century. Second, near the book's end, Zachhuber claims that Karl Barth should not be interpreted as absolute breaking point with the idealist-inflected theology of the nineteenth century. Rather, Barth was a ‘late product’ (p. 291) of it – typified by Albrecht Ritschl's many followers toward the end of the century. Put differently, Barth owes much more to the nineteenth-century legacy than scholars usually acknowledge. Taken together, Zachhuber's points have implications for how we periodise modern theology. Instead of generalising about nineteenth-century ‘liberal’ (i.e. Schleiermachian) theology and twentieth-century ‘neo-orthodox’ (i.e.) Barthian theology, we should instead see Baur as the great hinge figure, who bequeathed to theology ambitions and dilemmas persisting, unflagging, until the present. Zachhuber's points are well taken, if not beyond question. While Schleiermacher's influence might sometimes be inflated, one cannot read his reflections on university organisation and theological education without being struck by the extensive domain that he gave to history in the precincts of theology and how he understood the theologian's role to be similar to that of the modern Wissenschaftler in any field – even if the theologian's Wissenschaft ought, finally, to serve the Church. What is more, Schleiermacher did not only influence Protestant theology, but Catholic as well. (Indeed, the revolutionary work accomplished at the ‘other’ [Catholic] Tübingen School, typified by the theologians Johann Sebastian Drey and Johann Adam Möhler, owes much to Schleiermacher.) With respect to Barth, Zachhuber's analysis is cogent, but Barth's decision virtually to ignore historical inquiry, not to mention his enormous output in dogmatic theology, suggests more of a break with the past than the author admits, even if the exact nature of that break remains a point open to debate. Zachhuber's modus operandi is largely internalist in nature – that is, he closely examines seminal and representative books and articles. Although he often makes mention of the larger institutional and political contexts of theology, one is left wondering if these contexts – that is, not just the theological arguments themselves – played an important role in shaping theological work during this period. At times Zachhuber pauses to note the shortcomings of those whom he treats. For example, the idea among some scholars that genuine scholarship necessarily must operate free of presuppositions (Voraussetzungslosikeit) strikes him as a claim not without its own set of presuppositions. In the final analysis, however, the author duly recognises the immense legacy of theology from this period: ‘Any retrospective survey of [the] period will not fail to acknowledge the sheer amount of creative, subtle, and scholarly work that these theologians produced over several decades on the basis of the idealist model’ (p. 296). Newcomers to the material and seasoned scholars alike will find Zachhuber's book itself a creative, subtle and scholarly accomplishment.