In this work of two massive volumes, Brian Douglas surveys Anglican eucharistic theology from Cranmer and Ridley to Rowan Williams, David Ford and Peter Jensen in the contemporary Anglican Communion. The first volume covers the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries, while the second volume is devoted entirely to figures of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The first and last chapters in each volume are identical, suggesting that everything in between is illustrative of those two chapters. The coverage is breathtaking, and the two volumes provide very useful summaries of many Anglican views. However, such a vast historical undertaking as this requires not only a detailed knowledge of the writings of the selected theologians, but also up-to-date secondary literature on their work. It requires putting each text in context. Since eucharistic theology coincides sometimes with liturgical revision, it requires in addition a detailed knowledge of liturgical works and current liturgical scholarship. Most of these are rarely demonstrated in these two volumes, and Douglas proceeds as though the writings existed in a vacuum. The rationale for this work appears to be, in part, because the author is from the Province of Australia where the Anglican Church is polarised by the diocese of Sydney whose Reformation fundamentalism is such that the sixteenth-century Anglican reformers themselves would have felt uncomfortable there. In some way these hefty tomes seem to be aimed at Moore Theological College and the theological ethnic cleansing that has taken place in the Sydney diocese. The author is extremely dependent upon David Armstrong's work on Nominalism and Realism, and sets out a grid or theoretical model in four boxes: Immoderate Realism, Moderate Realism, Immoderate Nominalism and Moderate Nominalism. The eucharistic theology of every Anglican theologian whom he discusses is placed in one of these boxes. According to Douglas's model, literal teaching that the bread and wine are changed into the physical flesh and blood of Jesus would be Immoderate Realism, whereas believing that the bread and wine have no association with the body and blood of Christ at all would be Immoderate Nominalism. Douglas gives an overall summary of each period, and then justifies his decision by what he calls ‘case studies’, where he discusses the writings of individual theologians of the period, and concludes with their classification. It would be difficult to find anyone to place in the category of Immoderate Realism, since no one has seriously ever contended that the bread and wine are changed into physical flesh and blood. However, people such as Peter Jensen and his brother Phillip, key figures in the diocese of Sydney, will find themselves consigned to the Immoderate Nominalist box. This method is ultimately unhelpful, since it enables Douglas to lift the writings from any proper historical, cultural and theological contexts, and the models that he posits are so broad that it is no wonder that most of the subjects of the case studies fall into either Moderate Realism or Moderate Nominalism. In the end these categories become quite meaningless due to the fact that each box encompasses those who actually have widely different theologies. It is extremely difficult to begin to understand English sacramental theology in the sixteenth century without knowing the European continental background, and the influences in England of Calvin, Bucer, Bullinger, Peter Martyr Vermigli and Laski, and the nuanced differences between them which would cause polarisation in England as to which Reformed doctrine was normative, but the continental background is totally neglected. Thus Douglas can quote a lengthy section from John Cosin's work on transubstantiation of 1656, without any comment at all on how this is Calvin's teaching and vocabulary. Douglas gives no rationale for the choice of particular divines and the exclusion of others, and there are puzzling omissions. In the sixteenth century, although Richard Hooker is included with William Perkins, missing is Dudley Fenner. John Cosin is included for the seventeenth century, but the crucial figures of Samuel Ward and Thomas Bedford are missing. William Forbes of Edinburgh is included, but not the more important John Forbes of Corse. For the nineteenth century Charles Ryle is discussed, but not Edward Bickersteth (who is referred to as Bickersmith in a footnote). Whereas Michael Ramsey appears in the chapter on the twentieth century, Gregory Dix (d.1952) somehow gets into the twenty-first. Another mystery is which writings of an author are selected. A section on Catherine Pickstock and John Milbank reads more like a review of Pickstock's After writing. Milbank's work on gift, which one would have thought might have been pertinent, is ignored, and Milbank appears almost as an after-thought in that section. Kenneth Stevenson, late bishop of Portsmouth, is discussed, but only two of his works are cited. No reference is made to his doctoral work on the Catholic Apostolic Church liturgy, which was formative in his earlier thinking, nor to his work with this reviewer on sacrifice/offering for the Church of England Liturgical Commission with the part played by the Church of Scotland's liturgical phrase, ‘pleading the eternal sacrifice’. A window into this was provided in an article that Stevenson wrote for the Scottish Journal of Theology. David Brown is considered with Anne Loades in a short work that they edited, but Brown's God and grace of body: sacrament in ordinary, and God in mystery and words: experience through metaphor and drama are entirely neglected. These points raise a question of just how accurate some of the summaries given by Douglas actually are. At times they appear as if they are simply recycled book reviews. Secondary literature, when used, is usually out-dated, and that is particularly so of the liturgy sections. The final liturgy section shows again Douglas's own context, with much attention given to the Australian situation, yet in the world-wide Anglican Communion the huge Province of Nigeria, which has had two new liturgies in recent years, is passed over. Of course selections have to be made in any work, but usually this requires some explanation. It would appear that Douglas has bitten off far more Anglican eucharistic theology than he has been able to digest properly, and has left a great deal still in the pantry. In his consideration of Rowan Williams, he quoted Williams's words, ‘if we try to signify God and his work by resorting to abstract expression, talking about minds and ideas in a vacuum, we dangerously forget what we are (flesh and blood, timebound) and create a phantom world of pseudo-objects alongside our own familiar one’. It appears that this is exactly what has happened in these two volumes. However, Douglas provides us with plenty of raw material and ideas on the basis of which a more useful book on Anglican eucharistic theology might be written.