Over the last decades there has been a luxuriant growth of published works about the history of modern Italy. Yet these studies have long been afflicted by a curious and glaring omission: any serious academic account of Italy's most evident, powerful and durable institution, the Catholic Church. Now, with John Pollard's book, the gap is filled at least for the student and school sixth form audience which, Pollard explains in his introduction, is his target. Catholicism in Italy is arranged chronologically, although chapters iii and iv both cover the liberal era before the First World War. About half the book deals with the story until the collapse of Fascism in 1945, with the rest, very usefully, concentrating on the post-Second World War and the fate of the Italian Republic, a topic still badly in need of detailed study by historians. Throughout the work Pollard has a triple focus, reporting the official line of the Vatican hierarchy, whether in Rome or in the manifold Catholic aspects of civil society, the approach to religious questions of Italian politicians, and what Pollard emphasises was the ‘popular religion’ of the masses – attitudes and practices that varied across the peninsula and were never reliably harnessed by either clerical or lay bosses. Pollard's chief theme is the way in which, despite the vicissitudes of encroaching modernity, Catholicism of some kind remains the most reliable distinguishing feature of a majority of Italians, while the institutions of the papacy and Vatican have exhibited an equal staying power. Indeed, he argues that, in our new millennium, ‘the influence of the Church/Catholicism upon Italian politics has never been so strong’ (p. 172). Neither the imposition of an Italian nation after 1870, nor the ‘totalitarian’ ambitions of Mussolini's dictatorship, nor the consumerist democracy of more recent times (when the national brand, ‘Jesus jeans’, were advertised with an image of an alluring female behind in cut-down pants and the slogan ‘whoever loves me should follow me’, p. 135), fully dislodged Catholicism from Italian minds, souls and practices. In sum, in his succinct review of his topic, Pollard presents facts and interpretation that should find a central place in the debates of all those wishing to review the Italian story. One small complaint: the book has too many typographical or spelling errors for its (elevated) cost. In what must be going to be the paperback edition, it would be nice to think that the author and his sub-editor could eliminate them.