Books and articles discussing martyrdom and gender in early Christianity are now common but L. Stephanie Cobb takes a distinct approach, focusing on issues of identity, influenced by the social psychologists John Turner and Henri Tajfel. Here identity is seen as contextual and relational, and shifting depending on whether one's own, or an outside group, is being addressed. This basic idea is central to the book's analysis. Cobb argues that martyr texts sought to portray Christians as possessing a masculinity superior to that of their religious rivals (the out-group), although this situation was complicated in the case of female martyrs, who needed to be portrayed as simultaneously masculine and feminine in order to be acceptable role models and community members (for the in-group). This brief work consists of three more or less introductory and two substantive chapters, focusing on martyrological texts in detail. The introduction explains the approach and its focus on issues of identity while chapter i summarises ancient ideas of gender. Chapter ii looks at the figures of the gladiator and the athlete, important models for the martyr. This material, like the gender discussion in the previous chapter, will perhaps be overly familiar to ancient historians and my concern is that the masculinity of the gladiator was actually more problematic than it seems here. The two following chapters take us to the heart of the project, focusing on close readings of the martyr texts, looking at male and female martyrs respectively. In chapter iii Cobb argues very strongly for the central importance of masculinity in the identity of the Christian martyr, as ‘not simply one among many equal aspects of Christian identity; rather, in many of the martyr texts it is the very definition of Christianity’ (p. 91). This argument is significantly problematised in the case of female martyrs such as Perpetua and Blandina (chapter iv): Cobb shows how they are represented as ‘simultaneously masculine and feminine’. Their masculinity, Cobb argues, was used in order to shame the out-group (pagans and Jews) but their intracommunal (in-group) identity had to be sufficiently feminine in order for them to be acceptable as role models. Ultimately a masculine identity, suitably renegotiated where necessary, was central to the claim to power made by Christian texts in the pre-Constantinian world. Cobb's succinct monograph is clearly and engagingly written and has something to offer in a burgeoning field.