This volume is a very substantively expanded version of Hilari Raguer's seminal work on the Catholic Church during the Spanish civil war of 1936–9 (La espada y la cruz [The sword and the cross] (Barcelona 1977)). Sadly, like so much excellent Spanish work, the original was never translated into English, thus depriving many students and (non-Hispanist) scholars alike of access to what is, without any doubt, the most nuanced and sophisticated analysis of the subject anywhere in existence. So the translation of this much expanded version is welcome indeed. Gunpowder and incense rests on significant new research – in particular concerning the Vatican's controversial position. Raguer also explains how and why Spanish ecclesiastical leaders became involved in what was a conscious political strategy by the military rebels to construct their coup, after the event, as a religious ‘crusade’ (this chronological observation is important, notwithstanding the fact that the idea of a ‘crusade against modernity’ was emerging in certain sectors of Spanish society during the 1930s). The author handles with great intelligence and subtlety the fraught subject of the religious policy of Republican Spain, in the process opening up for the reader the ideological and cultural plurality that has always existed inside the Spanish Catholic Church – even if often in problematic relation with its ecclesiastical cupola. Most important, Hilari Raguer's analysis, written in lucid and highly readable prose, is packed with insights that break down the unfortunate manichean optic of other Spanish studies of the religious question during the civil war. Their authors have – even very recently – presented it in terms that are, frankly, barely distinguishable from those of the victorious Franco dictatorship's crude ‘crusade’ propaganda. Raguer also writes as an ‘insider’. But while this gives him enormous advantages in terms of contextual knowledge and understanding, in his case it never leads to the aforementioned tunnel vision. For he is always sensitive to the nuance and contradiction of both Spain's multi-faceted religious ‘question’ and the institutional politics of the Catholic Church during a civil war that was, over and above a ‘religious tragedy’ quite simply a human tragedy on a vast scale. As well as a unique text for its balance and perceptiveness, its exquisite English translation fills an important gap. For while we have some very good broad-sweep works by specialists, most notably Frances Lannon's Privilege, persecution and prophecy (London 1987) and William J. Callahan's The Catholic Church in Spain, 1875–1998 (Washington 2000), until now no monograph on the civil war years has been available. Hilari Raguer's book is a profoundly important one – for the new knowledge it communicates and for doing justice to the complexity of the subject, but also for the humanity that underscores the author's analysis. In a subject area as polemical as this one remains, the medium is also a crucial part of the message.