Christianity is in origin a Middle Eastern religion. It took root and flourished in the eastern Roman Empire and in the lands beyond the empire to the east. Within the empire its centres were the great cities of Alexandria and Antioch, to which came to be added Jerusalem and Constantinople. Further east, Edessa and Seleucia-Ctesiphon became important theological and ecclesiastical centres, from which the Church of the east spread the Gospel across central Asia as far as China. In the fifth century doctrinal disputes divided Christians in the region. Those Churches which accepted the Christological formula of the Council of Chalcedon in 451 are in current ecumenical terminology known as Eastern Orthodox. Those which rejected Chalcedon are conveniently in English designated Oriental Orthodox. The Church of the east refused to accept the decision of the Council of Ephesus in 431, that theotokos is a necessary title of Mary; once called Nestorian, it is in a category of its own. All these Churches were decimated, first by the seventh-century Arab, and later by the thirteenth- and fourteenth-century Mongol incursions. From all these Churches some groups, and the entire Maronite community, at different times, entered into communion with Rome, forming distinct eastern-rite Catholic Churches. These various Middle Eastern Churches are little known in the west, and this, the most recent volume in Routledge's Culture and Civilisation in the Middle East series, sets out to inform western readers about their current situation. An introductory chapter, by Emma Loosley, outlines the doctrinal and political evolution of the Eastern and Oriental Churches. Sebastian Brock writes about the Syrian Orthodox Church, Fiona McCullum about the Maronites in Lebanon, and John Healey about the Church of the east and its Chaldean (Catholic) branch. In his account of the Coptic Orthodox Church in Egypt Anthony O'Mahony draws in part on his chapter in a larger collection of essays which he edited (Eastern Christianity: studies in modern history, religion and politics, 2004). John Whooley contributes a study on the Armenian Church, Sotiris Roussos a chapter on Eastern Orthodox Christianity, and Anthony O'Mahony‘s concluding contribution is on the Syrian Catholic Church. Given the space available, each contribution is necessarily compact; and though the book is intended for general readers as well as specialists, the former would find background knowledge helpful, and the latter might wonder whether it provides £75-worth of fresh insight. But that the west needs to be informed about these Churches is undeniable. They face severe problems, the more acute of which are often linked with western military adventures in the region, initiated by politicians who were perhaps among those ignorant of these ancient indigenous Christian communities. Perhaps therefore it did not occur to them to give thought to the impact of western ‘crusades’ on their fate, which is all too likely to be the virtual extinction of Christianity in most of its historic heartlands.