This is a collection of twenty essays by eighteen different authors; the editor contributes four essays and one is co-authored by two scholars. The authors come from a variety of backgrounds and constitute an encouraging mixture of both established and promising younger writers. Inevitably the English of the non-native speakers creaks a little at times, but the defects are minor and do not distract from the flow of the text. After an introductory essay by the editor, the book is arranged in two sections: ‘Eastern Christianity behind the Iron Curtain’ and ‘Eastern Christianity beyond the Iron Curtain’. In any collection of essays there is the danger that one or two contributors will fail to conform to the general pattern of the book. Lucian Leustean is to be congratulated on keeping his authors on a tight rein. The essays are generally of uniform length, around twenty pages in the first section and fifteen or so in the second, the one exception being that on the Czechoslovak Orthodox Church. Each chapter, and in chapters dealing with more than one Church each section, ends with a useful summary of sources used, together with statistics on population, the strength of congregations, and the religious and political leaders who held office during the Cold War years. For the purpose of the book those years are defined as essentially from the late 1940s to the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. These are not absolute limits, however, and authors sensibly give background information on the fate of the Churches in earlier years, particularly when those institutions had to contend with the Bolsheviks' anti-religious drives, or the pressures of attempted Russification before 1917. This means that each chapter offers an extremely useful summary of the history of its particular Church or Churches; for anyone wishing to find background information on any or all of these Churches this book will provide an ideal introduction. A number of important themes emerge from the book. Not surprisingly, one is the contest and tension between the Ecumenical and the Moscow Patriarchates; another is the way in which the Churches were able to adapt to political, social and financial pressures. Less well-known, and very instructive, is the way in which a number of authors relate evolutions in religious and ecclesiastical affairs to the dynamics of the Cold War itself; see, for example, Paschalis Kitromilides on the Ecumenical Patriarchate and Steve Kaplan on the Ethiopian Orthodox Tawahedo Church. A number of chapters have interesting detail on divisions within individual Churches; particularly fascinating is that on the Bogomoljci, a group within the Serbian Orthodox Church which has strong echoes of the mediaeval Bogomils. This book is comprehensive, well-organised and well-edited. I read it with pleasure and profit.