This is an interesting and well-argued book by two scholars who have already made significant contributions to Cistercian history. They divide the subject between them, most falling to Kerr, five chapters, while Burton takes the introduction and the next two chapters. A glossary of technical terms, and substantial, up-to-date bibliography, mostly of works in English, with some in French, five in German and none in Italian or Spanish, add to the usefulness of the book. It is clearly aimed at two kinds of reader, students and visitors to monastic sites, who will gain much from good descriptions of the layout and purposes of monastic buildings. Unusually the authors take their examples from continental Europe, as well as from the British Isles, and they pay attention to the existence of Cistercian nuns, so the book will fill real gaps. There are, on the other hand, merely four plates, all by Stuart Harrison, and an almost unreadable map, where small squares marking each abbey often appear to merge into each other. A beautiful cover, from the Beaupré antiphonary, portraying a monk at an organ whose bellows are being worked by a figure dressed in brown (a lay brother ?), is never mentioned in the text. On the other hand, we are given sure guidance through some of the subjects upon which scholars have so far been unable to reach a common mind, for example the dispute about when a real Cistercian order emerged, pursued in some of the works of Chrysogonus Waddell and Constance Berman. I was puzzled, on the other hand, by the apparent reluctance of the authors to explore numbers. As a result some readers may deduce that all monasteries contained the same number of monks, and that those numbers did not vary over the centuries. When they address the provision that communities made for the sick and poor who approached them for help, they do not seem to wonder how significant this care was for those who provided, or received it. Since the appearance of Angelic monks and earthly men by Ludo Milis in 1992, I would have expected such questions would have been worth pursuing. There are some signs that proof-reading was done too fast: John of Forde appears to die in 1240 (p. 118), and, correctly, in 1214 (pp. 142, 186 n. 196). It is also strange to find Henry ii described as ‘descended from Edward the Confessor’ (p. 132), since Edward had no descendants, but both he and Henry ii did draw some of their ancestors from the great Anglo-Saxon kings of the tenth century and earlier. Despite such blemishes, this book should interest and stimulate many readers.