This book focuses on the late nineteenth-century Holiness movement in the southern states of the USA and, to a lesser extent, the Pentecostal movement that emerged in the early twentieth century and was inextricably linked to the earlier movement. Based on archival work for a doctoral dissertation, four of its six comprehensive chapters are about the Holiness movement and its various offshoots, the last two treating its progeny, Pentecostalism. Predictably, the narrative sometimes struggles to separate the history of the southern movements from the wider North American scene and therefore does not completely deliver on its promise to relate the ‘untold’ story of the southern movements (p. 4). Included in this study are extensive accounts of the role of premillennialism, different social issues and the various defining doctrines of sanctification, healing and baptism in the Spirit, the latter becoming the main emphasis of Pentecostalism. The American South, with its ‘Bible Belt’, was an important part of this history, and the study's concentration on the southern states is justified by the fact that most of the older and largest Pentecostal denominations have their headquarters and strongest support base in this region. The final chapter skims through some of southern Pentecostalism's more recent developments and, among other issues, discusses its ultraconservative public image and political involvement exemplified by such as Pat Robertson and John Ashcroft. The book's most significant contribution does not lie as much in its historical narrative on American Pentecostalism (on which subject a number of important studies have already appeared), as in the rich historical detail it provides on the lesser-known Holiness background to southern Pentecostalism. The attention given to race and gender issues is particularly intriguing. Although more original sources on Pentecostalism itself might have enhanced this part of the story, the book does provide a useful background to understanding the reasons behind the emergence of the fastest expanding religious movement of the twentieth century and the important role of the American South in its formative years.