This volume is the second in the series Readings in Russian Religious Culture. Three of the nine chapters are in Russian. Khomyakov was the leading figure in Slavophilism, the intellectual current which stood opposed to westernism in early nineteenth-century Russia. He was also a devout member of the Russian Orthodox Church. This book is a useful addition to the extensive literature on Khomyakov and his development of the concept of ‘sobornost’, the insight that Unity and Freedom are not mutually exclusive concepts but on the contrary intimately interdependent, as aspects of the living experience of the Church. Khomyakov's contribution to religious thought, examined in a substantial chapter by Sergei Khoruzhii, involves distinguishing Orthodoxy from Catholicism (unity without freedom) and Protestantism (freedom without unity). One of the strengths of this volume is its placing of Khomyakov in a wide intellectual and cultural context. Various chapters discuss the polemic between Khomyakov and Ivan Gagarin, ‘the first Russian Catholic theologian’, and the Anglican theologian William Palmer. Khomyakov was originally a poet, and other chapters consider his relationship with Pushkin as well as the affinities between the creativity of Khomaykov and the composer Rachmaninoff. Archimandrite Luke Murianka argues that Khomyakov's theology is no abstract theorising but rooted in his personal religious experience. Paul Valliere agrees that Khomyakov's achievement is an ‘experientialization of ecclesiology’. Valliere also argues, however, that Khomyakov is an essentially modern thinker. He was perhaps the first Russian Orthodox layman to engage in theology as a scholarly activity; he was also influenced by contemporary phenomena such as German Romanticism. Slavophilism itself was ‘a modern invention’, according to Valliere, with practical social aims. According to Robert Bird, Pushkin and Khomyakov laid down the shape and content of Russian culture in the second half of the nineteenth century; even those (like the philosopher Vasili Rozanov) who disagreed with Khomyakov felt the need to come to terms with him. Interest in Khomyakov is now being revived in post-Soviet Russia; but if during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries ‘sobornost’ was treated as a principle of social existence, and the ecclesiological aspect was forgotten, nowadays the opposite is occurring. Richard Tempest quotes Nikolai Berdiaev to the effect that Khomyakov and the Slavophils were not apocalyptically-minded; arguably however an apocalyptic sentiment, involving a sense of a tragic break between Church and society, is typical of Russian Orthodoxy in Russia today. It will be fascinating to see how Khomyakov's legacy will continue to be shaped in the contemporary Russian environment.