In From mission to modernity, Paul Sedra explores the ‘textualizing and moralizing’ impulses that marked the Egyptian educational system through the nineteenth century. He argues that in the contact between Evangelical missionaries, local Coptic and Muslim educationalists, and Egyptian government officials, we see how the English monitorial school movement made its mark in a modernising Egyptian context. The study begins by focusing on the roots of monitorialism in Britain and its transmission to the Middle East through the English Church Missionary Society (CMS). Specifically, Sedra shows how, by the 1860s, the interests of Coptic clergymen, the Egyptian Khedive and Protestant missionaries all converged in their goals of instilling ‘industry, discipline, and order among peasants’ (p. 132). Here, Sedra sheds light on an impressive array of missionary documents, closely focusing on the papers and writings of the Revd John Lieder and on the Armenian reformist Joseph Hekekyan. In the second half of the book, Sedra investigates how missionary schools inspired Coptic religious leaders like the patriarchs Cyril iv and Demetrius ii and how they offered a formative educational model that would be altered and reinterpreted in accordance with perceived Coptic needs. According to Sedra, Cyril iv, through his understandings of English notions of education and ‘improvement’, would come to ‘fashion a modern Coptic subjectivity’ by designing, for instance, an educational programme that emphasised instruction in ‘Arabic, Coptic, the Bible, and Church doctrine’ to be applied in his Great Coptic School (est. 1855) (pp. 112, 122). For many years, Coptic suspicion of formalised schools and of an expanding state structure would limit the successes of Cyril's school (p. 127), but the Great Coptic School's influence, as Sedra notes, becomes apparent by the late nineteenth century when more Coptic elites – particularly in Upper Egypt – readily accepted the pedagogical techniques of a modern missionary-influenced education (p. 170). In these latter parts of the book, the reader would have welcomed more clarification on the role of Catholic missionaries and of the Coptic Catholic Uniate Church within these transformations. Since the late seventeenth century there had been Catholic schools and churches in Upper Egypt, especially in the towns of Asyut and Akhmim where many Protestant educators were based throughout the nineteenth century. Allusions to the Catholics’ response to Protestant activities would have enriched the overall discussion. In all, though, Sedra's book is well-written and thoroughly researched, especially when elucidating the richness of missionary perspectives. Following on Sedra's notion of ‘a modern Coptic subjectivity’, the book will no doubt inspire future investigations based in Coptic archives, which might offer complementary accounts about how Coptic religious leaders understood the mission and how it shaped not only educational practices but also modern religious rituals, traditions and interpretations. From mission to modernity will stand, for many years to come, as a standard reference work on the history of missionary educationalists in Egypt. Sedra is to be commended for writing such a novel and meticulous account.