Étienne Baluze, who was born at Tulle in the Bas-Limousin in 1630 and died at Paris in 1718, was a towering figure in a golden age of early modern French scholarship. As did his great Maurist contemporaries Jean Mabillon and Thierry Ruinart, Baluze was responsible for presenting and explicating important sources for pre-modern western history (cf. p. 175). Yet whereas the Maurists' erudition in great part served ecclesiastical purposes and especially those of the Benedictine order, Baluze was not a monk and his learning enhanced both ecclesiastical and secular history. He referred to himself as ‘Stephanus Baluzius (or ‘Baluze’, see p. 231) Tutelensis', in homage to his origins, and although Gillet's fine study gives a wide perspective on Baluze and his times the emphasis is on south-central France. The two-volume Histoire généalogique de la maison d'Auvergne was published in 1708, and the Historiae Tutelensis libri tres appeared in 1717 and held a special place among Baluze's works. Gillet divides her monograph into four parts, each containing several chapters: part i, ‘Le jeu des solidarités familiales’; ii, ‘Les autres moyens d'investigation’ (chapter iv of which is devoted to Baluze as librarian [1667–1700] to Jean-Baptiste Colbert, Louis xiv's powerful finance minister); iii, ‘La mise en œuvre des documents: genèse de l'Historia Tutelensis; and iv: ‘Le reste de la documentation limousine: projets et realizations’. Anyone who has glanced into the Collection Baluze in the Département des manuscrits of the Bibliothèque nationale de France will appreciate the wealth of information found in the bibliography and the appendices of this work. Of particular interest to this reviewer were appendices 5 and 6 (pp. 220–30). The former contains a short description by P. Léonard Sainte-Catherine (BNF, ms fr. 22586, fos 175–6), of Baluze's Parisian library in the year 1703, and the latter lists a substantial group of printed works ‘d'histoire régionale’ that were in the library. The bibliography (pp. 195ff.) includes more than sixty manuscripts from the BNF's Fonds Baluze, in addition to thirty more in the Fonds latin and elsewhere. This volume will thus be of interest to anyone, specialist and non-specialist alike, who is concerned with French seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century intellectual life, with the long career of Étienne Baluze and especially with his affection for his patrie.