Dennis C. Dickerson's The African Methodist Episcopal Church: A History skillfully narrates the history of this African American Protestant denomination, situating the church's theory and praxis within the black radical tradition as it was expressed in the United States and across the Atlantic world. Rich descriptions of institutional polemics and well-constructed prosopography introduce numerous themes: the founding of African Methodism; the growth of the denomination in the United States and abroad; the involvement of church members in various pan-African and civil rights movements; the bishops’ ties to famed white theologians, preachers, politicians, and U.S. presidents; and the denomination's varied internal tensions. This preponderance of themes, along with their corresponding facts, undergird a simple, well-founded thesis. Despite tensions between church leaders and an uneven follow-through, the AME Church's project has aligned with the long fight against global white supremacy; the denomination is committed to the liberation of black people across the Atlantic world.

Until now, an institutional history of the AME Church that places the denomination within an Atlantic world framework has not existed. Academic histories on African Methodism tend to focus on one leader, period, or theme. Biographies of bishops Richard Allen, Daniel A. Payne, Henry McNeal Turner, and Joseph Gómez come to mind as do monographs on AME missions in West and South Africa. Dickerson's tome, however, is expansive. It benefits not only from his historical training and private collection of rare AME records but also from his twenty-four years of service as the historiographer of the denomination (1988–2012) and a 2012 run for bishop. This institutional service has provided the author with an unparalleled depth of knowledge on the AME Church's past and present operations. Through this dual lens, Dickerson analyzes rare General and Annual Conference minutes, reports, and pamphlets and ties two centuries of AME history to the fields of American religious history and African American internationalism. In this work, Dickerson has carried forth the legacy of the denomination's first historiographer, Bishop Payne (1811–1893).

The chapters, while long, flow easily from one theme to the next, driven by riveting biographies of AMEs in the United States, Africa, and the Caribbean. Each chapter toggles between the domestic and overseas dimensions of the church. For example, the first two chapters cover the founding of African Methodism by Richard Allen and Daniel Coker during the Atlantic world struggle for abolition. The third chapter recounts the AME Church's expansion to the U.S. South, West, and abroad to Hispaniola after the Civil War. It culminates with the 1884 reunion of the AME and British Methodist Episcopal Church of Canada, a denomination founded by African Methodist fugitives in Canada who split from the AME Church in 1856 due to the Fugitive Slave Act (1850). The next chapter closes out the nineteenth century with a vision of African Methodism's continued growth abroad in Cuba, the British Caribbean, and Africa. Here we see the biographies of lesser-known leaders born outside the United States like bishops John Hurst (Haiti) and William B. Derrick (Antigua) alongside U.S. giants like Henry McNeal Turner. The book culminates with three extended chapters on the twentieth century. Chapter 5 chronicles the church's reactions to the two world wars, the Great Migration, the Great Depression, and the Garvey movement while revealing some AME leaders’ colorism, classism, and hostility toward Southern migrants and Garveyites. At the same time, Dickerson concludes that individual members, such as the Antigua-born Bermudian teacher Richard H. Tobitt, carried forth Richard Allen's legacy. The next chapter shows AME members at the frontlines of the Civil Rights movements and decolonialization efforts in Africa. Biographies of Rosa Parks and Shirley Graham Dubois, among others, reveal these Civil Rights leaders’ ties to the denomination. The last chapter brings us to African Methodism's cutting edge: women in leadership, LGBTQ inclusion, and critiques of neo-colonialism within the global AME church. Here Dickerson draws on his deep insight on the institution and reminds readers that, despite internal conflict within the denomination, AMEs have consistently struggled for black liberation; the sum is made up of its individual parts. “An emancipationist ethos” has driven “AME theology and praxis and [has] energized its transatlantic reach” (558).

Along with accolades duly lavished, historians will also find reasons for critique. Despite the book's Atlantic world scope, the author's lens maintains a U.S. historical outlook. The chronology centralizes a U.S. periodization, and the in-depth focus on the U.S. Civil Rights struggle during the long twentieth century loses sight of multiple events taking place abroad. The reader may wonder, for example, how African Methodists reacted to multiple U.S. occupations in Haiti and the Dominican Republic as well as the Cuban Revolution. A greater engagement with key works on religion, race, and U.S. imperialism, especially recent books by Sylvester Johnson, Tisa Wenger, and Melani McAlister, may have engendered a more pointed challenge to U.S. blacks’ primacy in the organization. Citations to recent research on AME missions by Elisabeth Engel, Brandi Hughes, and Christina C. Davidson would have also supported the contributions of chapters 3 and 4. Critical engagement with the AME Church's historical missionary newspaper, the Voice of Missions, and the AME Church's Missionary Department archive and Llewellyn L. Berry Papers housed at the Schomburg Center in New York—as well as other public archives, including those located at the AME Church's educational institutions—would have also enriched the narrative. A comprehensive list of these resources alongside the itemization of Dickerson's personal archive provided in the bibliography would have generated a valuable register of AME archival resources. A brief authorial reflection upon the incomplete state of said public resources would have underscored the weight of Dickerson's private treasure trove. Still, on the topic of sources, there is yet another point to be praised. To readers’ benefit, Dickerson treats contemporary essays published in the Christian Recorder and the AME Church Review as valuable primary and secondary sources and thus legitimizes the scholarship found therein.

The African Methodist Episcopal Church: A History is, by far, the best history of the AME Church to date. Its in-depth analysis of rare primary sources supports an indisputable thesis. The author is uniquely positioned to write expertly on AME Church history and has done his job well. In short, Dickerson's history is a masterful piece of scholarship that, despite its historiographical blind spots, will continue to inspire both students of African Methodism and scholars of religion for generations to come.