Cologne has undoubtedly waited too long for its early history to be told in English. In this work, Professor Huffman sets out to provide a historical survey of Cologne during the Roman and early medieval periods. He has clearly read widely, in both English and German, around the history of Cologne, Francia and Germany during the early medieval period. This book, which is very detailed and contains a lot of narrative, raises several interesting questions about aspects of Cologne's history during this period.

Huffman bookends this work between Marcus Agrippa's relocation of the Ubii people onto the site of Cologne in 19 BC and the death of Emperor Henry V in AD 1125. These dates establish the parameters of a wide, imperial framework focused on political and dynastic events and processes, and the role played by Cologne's bishops and archbishops therein. Consequently, this work feels unbalanced. The history of Cologne's walled suburb (the first in Germany) and the development of markets, fairs and harbours in the tenth century are, for instance, cursorily integrated into a section on the archiepiscopate of Bruno I (pp. 112–13). There is an extended survey of the ‘dreary business’ (p. 232) which was the Investiture Controversy, yet the only guild or fraternity discussed in any detail is the Richerzeche or ‘Fraternity of the Rich’. It is, too, unfortunate that a book which sets out to provide a comprehensive history of Cologne in English then directs the reader to two German-language publications to learn more about these important organizations.

The most engaging sections of this book are found when Huffman does turn his attention to the people of Cologne. For example, when discussing the continuity of urban life in sub-Roman Cologne, the tribulations of the Jewish community during the First Crusade, the growth of industry and commerce in tenth-century Cologne and the twelfth-century emergence of institutions of municipal governance. There is, however, too little of this type of discussion and it can at times feel rather unsophisticated. For example, we are told that ‘in spite of these political upheavals’ as the Carolingian Empire fell apart and Vikings and Magyars attacked the Rhineland, ‘the socio-economic history of Cologne remained strong and steady during the whole of the Carolingian era’ (p. 90).

This book is published in the ‘Early Medieval North Atlantic’ series which has the laudable aim of publishing works which regard ‘the North Atlantic as a centre, rather than a periphery’. Regrettably, because so much attention is focused on imperial and papal high politics, there is little room for the peoples and communities of the north Atlantic. The Vikings, for example, turn up in this book in a very similar way to their appearance in the chronicles of the Middle Ages. Essentially, they enter in 881 on p. 87, cause destruction and leave in 882 on p. 89. But there was much more contact between the Vikings and Germans than that: the most numerous coins found in the Viking world are German ones, yet there is no detailed analysis or discussion of economic connections between Cologne and Scandinavia here.

More, too, could have been done to make this book useful as a work of reference. The use of so much Latin in the index is odd; one would also have expected to find people listed under their Christian names rather than by offices. ‘London’ (one of Cologne's most important trading partners) has no entries in the index, while there are three entries for ‘Augsburg’ under ‘A’, but yet the ‘Diet of Augsburg’ under ‘D’ points the reader elsewhere. A list of bishops and archbishops of Cologne would have been useful as an appendix and there is but one map of the parishes and districts of Cologne. Huffman is undoubtedly correct that ‘no medieval church in the city has been more extensively excavated than the Cologne cathedral’ (p. 70). Plans of the three iterations of this structure would have been a useful complement to the text on this page. It is also surprising that a book priced at a hefty €105 contains no plates whatsoever. As Huffman notes, the Cologne silver penny was the dominant currency in the Rhineland region. Why no images of these pennies? We are told, too, that the civic seal used by the scabini in Cologne is almost certainly the oldest municipal seal in European history, and yet the reader is not told in this section that this remarkable seal is actually depicted on the book's cover. Moreover, instead of a fuller analysis of the seal as a historical source, the possible meanings of the seal are briefly analysed in a footnote (p. 222).

The Imperial City of Cologne is a book in which much more emphasis is placed on the ‘imperial’ in the book's title than on the ‘city of Cologne’. It left me rather unsure of the intended audience for the work. This book will be useful to students looking to learn more about the role played by Cologne's bishops and archbishops in contemporary imperial politics. I am less sure that this book will be of use to historians interested in urban development in early medieval Europe, nor to those looking to place Cologne within a North Atlantic nexus.