Of all the features of American religiosity that Europeans find most bizarre, none is more alien than the continuing hold of pre-millennial dispensationalism, with all its prophesies about the rise of the AntiChrist, the ascent of the righteous into heaven in the Rapture, the seven years' Tribulation and the climactic battle of Armageddon. And nothing is perhaps more disquieting than the evolution of these historically quaint but hermetically-sealed beliefs in the mindsets of a significant number of Protestant fundamentalists into a form of Christian Zionism that sees the current Middle East conflict between Israel and the Palestinians as a precise working-out of God's plan. There are influential pastors in the United States who preach hatred of Palestinians and offer undying and uncritical support for Israel, who call for nuclear strikes on the wicked Islamicists of Iran – all Muslims being inherently wicked, of course – who see Ariel Sharon's stroke as divine punishment for his evacuation of Gaza, thus surrendering part of the land bequeathed to the Jews, and who actively look forward to the day when the plains will run deep with blood. With George W. Bush in the White House, such folk found a man who, if he did not share their preoccupations, was at least happy to pay some lip service to them. Victoria Clark's impressively researched book, part journalism, part history, charts the rise of the movement and the development of its thought with fastidious scholarship – and an understandable degree of distaste. It is an important and definitive contribution to understanding this strange but enduring movement.