Although the late Henry Gariepy begins with William Booth and ends with a chapter entitled ‘Marching forward’, he really provides a series of topical essays on various aspects of the Salvation Army rather than a chronological account of its history. Nevertheless, as befitting the last work of a veteran Salvation Army journalist, the book is written with flair and enthusiasm, bringing alive the Army's ethos. Anecdotes like the story of a Papuan officer sharing a cup of tea with a woman with AIDS in order to break down the local prejudice, or the account of relief teams at the World Trade Centre on 9/11 bathing the feet of fire-fighters, are very moving. The assiduous collection of statistics is another aspect of Booth's founding charism still exercised in the Army, so we learn for example that 39,731 blankets were distributed in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. Such stories and figures remind us that this organisation punches well above its weight internationally. With motivation perhaps as much apologetic as historical, Gariepy can be less than scrupulous in handling his material. For example, he cites Archbishop Benson's approval of the Army's decision not to practise the sacraments while passing tacitly over the reason for this – not that he agreed with their theology but that he believed that they were not competent to perform the rites. Likewise Gariepy's account of how the Army had ‘thrown down the gauntlet on the evils of Apartheid’ in the 1980s ignores its decades-long complicity with those evils and omits to mention its significant submission to the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission in 1997. As General Clifton notes in his foreword, the story is told from an American perspective – for example, its account of the Salvation Army's involvement in the First World War begins in 1917. The same explanation may lie behind a number of errors in dating concerning such matters as the introduction of ‘adherency’ as a category of membership, ‘auxiliary-captaincy’ as a rank, the institution of Moral and Social Issues Councils and the first publication of a Salvation Army Song Book. Frederick Coutts's much superior No discharge in this war (1975) is long out of print, leaving a gap in Salvation Army historiography, and although in recent decades the Salvation Army has been the subject of academic research and a number of analytical studies have been published, it still lacks a comprehensive critical history. This book is not it. This is a popular, institutional, ‘airbrushed’ history; journalism rather than history. There is limited attempt to place the Army's story in its social, historical, theological or ecclesiological context or to examine its critical issues. However, it should be judged for what it is rather than what it is not. Gariepy's history may serve well for the socialisation of new recruits and the encouragement of donors.