Augustine’s Passions is basically an “amplified Confessions” which investigates various topics—education, spectacles, sex, music, etc.—and elaborates on these with the help of Augustine's other late fourth-century works. Several of Ghisalberti's contextual elaborations are wonderfully illuminating (e.g., “breath” [125–145]).

The proposed overall trajectory is the movement from an idea that Roman society could be spiritually transformed to Augustine's sober realization that the “two cities” remained “separate, and never to be joined” (277). Consequently, Ghisalberti's early Augustine comes across as a perplexed anti-state religious dreamer. However, since Constantine and Theodosius, Roman society regarded itself as “Christian” and this certainly complicates any assessment of the issue of church and state at the end of the fourth century. Arguably, the past that Augustine turned away from was Manichaeism rather than being member of the Roman society (151; but see 161).

The author is, no doubt, widely read, but unfortunately his footnotes are often merely “decorative” (that is, page numbers are missing). In addition, one wonders whether the most important studies have always been consulted. Occasional “surprises”—for example, Augustine's son is named Deodatus (54); in Cassiciacum, Augustine and his friends are said not to have been engaged in manual labor (cf. c. Acad. 1.1.15) (78); or, Augustine is said to have privileged written words over spoken words (224)—do not increase the trustworthiness of Ghisalberti's analysis.

It is also not entirely clear why this largely socio-historical study is published in the Marquette Studies in Philosophy.