The series title, A People's History of Christianity, provides a clear declaration of intent: a move away from the more institutional and ‘from above’ approach of the ‘history of the Church’, which prevailed until around 1970, to the more ‘from below’ approach focusing primarily on popular religion. Indeed, all the chapters in the present work are in the latter vein; none of them attends directly to the institutional Church. The twelve authors are distinguished scholars; the volume represents a collection of individual essays more than an overall history. The editor provides a substantial introduction to the volume. Thereafter, part i, ‘Christianizing the people’, contains three chapters entitled ‘Converting the barbarian west’, ‘Death and burial’ and ‘Relics, ascetics, living saints’, written respectively by Yitzhak Hen, Bonnie Effros and Daniel Bornstein. Part ii, ‘Ordering worship’, contains Richard Kieckhefer's ‘The impact of architecture’ and Gary Dickson's ‘Medieval revivalism’. Part iii, ‘Controlling sex’, provides the chapters on ‘Clerical celibacy and the laity’ by André Vauchez and ‘Hearing women's sins’ by Roberto Rusconi. In part iv, ‘Defining boundaries’, there are two chapters: ‘Heresy and dissent’ by Grado Merlo and ‘Jews, Muslims and Christians’ by Teofilo Ruiz. Finally, part v, ‘Accessing the divine’, comprises three chapters: ‘Domestic religion’ by Diana Webb, ‘Parish life’ by Katherine French' and ‘The burdens of purgatory’ by Robert Swanson. The authors come predominantly from the USA and the UK but four are professors outside the Anglophone world: Merlo and Rusconi in Italy, Hen in Israel and Vauchez in France (for a list of contributors see pp. vii–x). The work is attractively produced with plenty of illustrations and many short ‘boxed’ articles to explain particular points. Each chapter concludes with a short bibliography, listing (with one exception) works in English or in English translation; various other works feature in the endnotes (pp. 383–97). The subdivisions within ‘subjects’ in the index (pp. 399–409) will prove particularly helpful to readers. Altogether the book is warmly recommended, though more as a collection of stimulating essays than as a comprehensive history of the medieval Church. Still, so many issues are treated that there is a certain comprehensiveness in the coverage. Although the volume is only one of seven in this history of Christianity, it covers half that history, from around the year 500 to the eve of the Reformation in 1500.