This book has been a long time in the making: the fieldwork that informs it (a month's involvement with each of seven churches chosen to reflect the range of Birmingham's Christian options, eighty-one lengthy interviews with members, and 228 responses to a questionnaire) was conducted in the late 1990s. But as its main concern is the change in the nature of the Churches and in their relationship with the wider society in the post-war years – and especially in the putatively crucial 1960s – it is none the worse for that. Jones ably makes the case for three vital changes in church culture: the relaxation of Victorian reverence and formality, a more ‘expressive and spontaneous approach to worship’, and a ‘concerted effort … to instil a friendlier and more welcoming ethos into Sunday mornings’ (p. 107). He is also good on the growing realisation among English Christians that they formed an increasingly isolated minority. One of the most socially significant elements of decline has been the almost complete disappearance of the penumbra of occasional attenders and non-churchgoing parents who sent their children to church. As one would expect from a postgraduate student supervised by Hugh McLeod, Jones finds a good balance between descriptive detail and analytical generalisation. He is also remarkably good at summarising without caricaturing such important social changes as the shift from public spaces to the private family home as the main locations for leisure activity. Not surprisingly, given the attention that it has attracted, Jones spends some time evaluating Callum Brown's case for church decline being recent and being caused largely by post-1960s women finding more rewarding things to do with their lives. He cautiously notes that his fieldwork provides little direct evidence for Brown's thesis. This, of course, does not mean that Brown is wrong but it raises an important problem for generalising explanations: the relationship between woods and trees. Historians (such as Brown and McLeod) have long criticised sociologists for generalising about woods without studying trees; here we have a perfect study of trees which fails to provide material to test propositions about woods. This rich account of local church life deserves a wide audience and it is to the credit of the Economic History Society, the Past and Present Society and the Royal Historical Society that their subsidies allow the Boydell Press to bring such work to our attention.