The 450th anniversary of Johannes Bugenhagen's death in 2008 prompted a number of commemorative events, especially in the Pomeranian Protestant Church. Having arisen from these events the present volume features, besides an overview of the year's proceedings, the revised papers of two academic meetings. The first meeting sought to locate the conceptual centre of Bugenhagen's work as a biblical theologian. Printed under the title ‘“By Word Alone”: Johannes Bugenhagen and the reformatory power of the Word’, eleven articles explore dimensions of the reformer's biblical interpretation, pastoral care, liturgical reforms and administrative undertakings. Yet Bugenhagen's interpretation of the biblical word, if reflected at all, is not prominent in every article; one encounters a rather broad reading of the concept of acting through the power of the word. Thanks to its interdisciplinary approach and breadth of topics – some synthesising current research, while others offering genuine contributions to the field – the volume on the whole makes for inspiring reading. To mention only a few contributions that lead in new directions, Matthias Schneider and Beate Bugenhagen probe the role that music played for Bugenhagen by examining musical aspects in Pomeranian Protestant worship. Ute Gause, following the preliminary work of Tim Lorentzen, discusses gender aspects in Bugenhagen's reformatory work by analysing the care for pregnant and birthing women in it. Heiner Lück provides insight into the techniques of Bugenhagen's administrative improvisations from the perspective of legal history. Also instructive is the lavishly illustrated article on the history of the print, ‘Von der Euangelischen Messz’, by Anneliese Bieber-Wallmann, as well as Inge Mager's example of a Relecture of known texts under a new perspective. The second meeting, also represented by eleven articles in this volume, may strike one as intended rather for specialists, since it deals with Johannes Bugenhagen's role in the transmission of reformatory impulses in the Low German language. Indeed, this section of the book entails a certain degree of linguistic analysis, but not only of Low German texts, including Bugenhagen's translation of the Luther Bible, but also – as in Boris Dunsch's article – of Bugenhagen's Latin style and, more generally, analysis of the cultural diffusion of the Reformation into northern Europe. Also, coming from the perspective of art history, Norbert Buske's article on the illustrated title pages of Bugenhagen's work is included. In the end, the effectiveness of the word appears to be more thoroughly reflected in the second part of the book than in the first. At first glance, the title of this volume would appear to conflict with its own aim, namely, to depict Bugenhagen not primarily as an organiser of ecclesiastical life, but rather more broadly as an independent theologian of the Reformation. In any case, the value of this well-edited book lies in its broad perspective on Johannes Bugenhagen, not to mention the solid basis it takes from current research, and the several research desiderata it pinpoints as being good starting-points for further studies.