Jerry Pierce is to be commended from the outset for venturing to write such a book with so exiguous a list of original sources, all relatively brief and all deeply hostile towards Gerard Segarelli, founder of the Order of Apostles, and his successor, Fra Dolcino. In his chronicle the Franciscan Salimbene, Pierce's major contemporary source for Segarelli and the Apostles, depicts Segarelli as an illiterate upstart, a want-to-be but rejected Franciscan, who shamelessly tried to ape the Friars Minor by replicating their habit and preaching poverty. The reason for his prejudice, Pierce believes, is order rivalry and jealousy. The Apostles were based in Parma and Salimbene's fellow citizens, the people of Parma, were donating more to the Apostles than to the established mendicant orders, the Dominicans and the Franciscans. As Salimbene tells it, Segarelli, after vainly attempting to become a Franciscan, founded the Apostles. Contrary to what the author believes, Salimbene does not say that Segarelli's Order of Apostles was founded in 1260. In fact, he pens his prolonged diatribe against Segarelli under the year 1248. Actually, it is the fourteenth-century inquisitor Bernard Gui who associates the year 1260 with Segarelli. Of course 1260 was a year of enormous significance for those who espoused the millenarian prophecies of Joachim of Fiore: it was then, it was believed, that there would be a grand transition in human history and the third age, the Age of the Holy Spirit would begin. This was the year of the disciplinati, when the flagellant movement began in Perugia. The author recognises this but fails to appreciate that Salimbene was at this time a fervent Joachite and in fact led flagellant processions. The author comments that ‘it is possible that Segarelli knew something of Joachite prophecy’ (p. 173 n. 12). Yet Salimbene, who quotes Joachite texts in his chronicle, never refers to Segarelli in the same breath. Throughout Poverty, heresy, and the apocalypse Segarelli is associated only with apostolic poverty, while it is his successor, Fra Dolcino, who embraces apocalyptic prophecy. Segarelli was burned as a heretic in 1300, after which Fra Dolcino assumed the leadership of the Apostles. Pierce cites ‘Norman Cohn's assertion that institutional persecution fosters apocalypticism in marginalized groups’, but it might be truer to say that persecution by the Church cemented the feeling of election on the part of the Apostles as well as favouring the demonisation of their enemy. One admires the author's bold and stimulating comparison between the fate of the Apostles and that of the Branch Davidians near Waco, Texas, in 1993, when, after a controversial siege by the US authorities, their religious community, Mt Carmel, was stormed and burned to the ground. Their leader David Koresh perished along with seventy-four of his followers. Pierce's comparison of their apocalyptical beliefs breaks down, however, because Koresh's apocalypticism, based on Seventh Day Adventist biblical prophecy, was the key to his theology well before his sect came to be persecuted. Embracing apocalypticism, Fra Dolcino and his followers fled to the region of Valsesia, an area of socio-economic discontent, where the Apostles found ready supporters against the bishop and the inquisitors. For Dolcino, the author is forced to make use of two highly biased accounts, the anonymous Historia which labels Dolcino a ‘heresiarch’ and his Apostles ‘pestiferous dogs’, along with the inquisitor and chronicler Bernard Gui. Pope Clement v preached a crusade against Dolcino's remaining Apostles, who were defeated in battle in 1307. While being driven in a cart for all to see Dolcino was tortured and slowly burned to death by the secular arm. Unfortunately, the author's laudable effort to contextualise Segarelli, Fra Dolcino and the unofficial Order of Apostles in their socio-economic and ecclesiastical-religious setting does not achieve its purpose. Chapters ii–iv are devoted to providing such a context. The result is a broad brush summary of Pierce's reading of the standard studies. The picture, alas, is not enhanced by its frame.