Holy fathers, secular sons is based on a prodigious archival collection of nineteenth-century ego-writings by Imperial Russian popovichi: that is, the sons of Russian Orthodox priests. Using memoirs, diaries and letters – as well as an extensive reading of literary polemics surrounding the clerical estate – Manchester attempts to describe the collective ethos of male clerical offspring: its vision of itself and its place in history; its relation to other classes; its conception of culture and the role culture plays in social progress. Having articulated this ‘ethos’, Manchester makes at least two big claims about it: first, that the intellectual style of the popovichi represented an alternative intelligentsia tradition, opposed to that of noble intelligenty but just as broadly influential in the making of modern Russian public life. Second, she argues that one of the main contributions of popovich society was the creation of Russian models for modern selfhood: a self for whom critical thinking and self-invention are essential activities. The book also contains discussions of relations between the parish clergy and Russia's monks; analyses of daily life and childhood in clerical homes; and an exploration of why, despite their loyalties to their estate traditions, popovichi left the clergy and entered the professions. The book concludes with an extensive bibliography of clerical ego-documents, a corpus of evidence that future scholars will no doubt depend upon. Manchester's work engages a very broad number of themes, which on occasion makes the text hard to read. The sheer number of points she chooses to make render some of her arguments less convincing (to this reader) than others. It is hard to prove such big interpretations in such a small space, especially when there are many of them. By the same token, the work is very thought-provoking, an interpretational and empirical feast that will be enjoyed for some time to come.