This small volume itself represents the afterlife of, or a memorial to, a previous text. In 1988 Bernhard Lang published, in co-authorship with Colleen McDannell, Heaven: a history (New Haven, Ct). The success of that volume, and an ongoing scholarly interest in the theme, has persuaded Lang to bring out this collection of seven related studies, all of which have appeared in some form before (indeed, two of them as prefaces to second or translated editions of Heaven). Several of the studies also echo the main theme of the earlier work in concerning themselves with the broad transition from a ‘theocentric’ to an ‘anthropocentric’ conception of heaven; ie, from an afterlife focused solely on the contemplation of God to one allowing for dynamic development and the reconstitution of human relationships. Subjects include varying receptions of the eccentric eschatology of Emmanuel Swedenborg (1688–1772), and the contrasting English heavens of Baxter, Bunyan and Milton (whom Lang rather touchingly thinks is read by undergraduates ‘in every British institution of higher education just as in Germany all pupils have to study Goethe's Faust'.) Arguably, the most interesting contributions are a study tracing Puritan reserve turning into Victorian sentimentality in the inscriptions of New England cemeteries, and a piece arguing that the Spanish afterlife bucked the European trend by remaining resolutely ‘theocentric’ into modern times. There are many points of interest and insight in this volume. But social historians of religion are likely to feel that (the New England piece aside) too much of the discussion hinges on elite and canonical texts talking to each other over the heads of lived experience. There is also a sense of very significant questions barely being tackled, at both ends of Lang's chosen period. To what extent did the abolition of purgatory (which has no index entry here) fundamentally structure the lineaments of Protestant heaven? And – the survey evidence on this is cited, but not dissected – how do we account for the apparently quite dramatic decline in recent decades of affirmation of the existence of heaven, even among those professing a belief in God?