In this lucid and persuasive book, Ingrid Rembold presents a thorough reevaluation of the influence of political and social forces on the Christianisation of Saxony in the Carolingian period. Drawing on a wealth of primary source materials ranging across annalistic histories, hagiography and vernacular literature (the Old Saxon Genesis and the Old Saxon verse Gospel harmony known as the Heliand), Rembold argues that the conversion of conquered Saxony to Christianity and its political integration into the Carolingian Empire were more successful than scholars have previously believed. After Charlemagne's wars of conquest, Saxony emerged as a distinctive religious and political landscape, but this distinctiveness, Rembold maintains, was not the product of resistance to Christianity by the Saxons, but rather the result of the intrinsic limits of local social and political resources. The book falls neatly into four long chapters. Chapter i reassesses the impact of the Saxon wars (772–85, 792–804) on the conversion of the Saxons. It argues that Saxon elites did not convert pragmatically to Christianity for the advantages it may have offered them over the lower orders of their society and, more importantly, that by the end of the wars Carolingian authors had already fully embraced the notion that the Saxons were a Christian people. Chapter ii dismisses the thesis that the popular Saxon uprising of 841 known as the Stellinga was symptomatic of a pagan backlash against Christianisation. Rembold deftly dismantles the motivations of the claims of Christian chroniclers that the Stellinga were pagans and reconstructs the aims of the movement in the context of military opportunism during the civil war that followed the death of Louis the Pious in 840. In chapter iii Rembold makes an important distinction: ‘while Christianity was instituted forcefully in Saxony, Christian structures were not’ (p. 186). The Christian infrastructure of post-conquest Saxony found little to no support either from the Carolingian kings or from the Frankish Church. In the absence of external patronage, Rembold shows how the collection of local tithes and the activism of the newly converted populace (expressed in modest, yet numerous, donations) provided the income necessary to sustain episcopal, monastic and local churches in Saxony. Chapter iv confronts the claim that Carolingian Saxony was a safe haven for tenacious pagan sympathies. In response, it charts the distinctive, yet recognisably Christian, religious landscape of the region, showing how its unique character resulted from the use of vernacular literature to disseminate Scripture, the location and function of episcopal sees in a countryside without urbanisation, and the preponderance of female monastic institutions and their role in pastoral care. In almost every respect, this is an ideal monograph. It offers new insights into old topics with a fresh reading of primary source evidence combined with a mastery of (but not undue reverence toward) the robust secondary scholarship. It is sure to shape the conversation about the Christianisation of Carolingian Saxony for some time to come.