In this excellent revised dissertation Wendy Love Anderson provides a more comprehensive, less gendered review of discernment than the recent books by Dyan Elliott and Nancy Caciola. Arguing that discernment was always a plural, internally conflicted discourse, not one that somehow remained stable from the patristic era through Ignatius Loyola, Anderson begins with true and false prophecy in the Hebrew Bible. She touches lightly on the twelfth century (Hildegard of Bingen, Joachim of Fiore) before reaching her centre of gravity in the late Middle Ages. Chapter ii deals with Franciscan controversies: the ‘Eternal Evangel’ of 1254, the secular-mendicant conflict in Paris, David of Augsburg and, especially, Peter of John Olivi. Chapter iii, ‘Free spirits and distinctions’, introduces the little-known Augustinus of Ancona and Henry of Friemar and discusses Eckhart, Suso, Tauler and Ruusbroec (but not Marguerite Porete). In Chapter iv Anderson introduces gender in the context of schism politics, focusing on the controversial prophecies of Birgitta of Sweden, Catherine of Siena and the royal visionary Pedro of Aragon, called the Infante. The schism continues to dominate chapter v, which turns to academic discernment and the influential works of Pierre D'Ailly, Henry of Langenstein and the young Gerson. Anderson's final chapter, ‘Gerson and the reform of discernment’, treats the chancellor's major treatises on this topic in the context of conciliarism and his overarching reform agenda, ending with his defence of Joan of Arc. A brief conclusion notes the simplification and distortion of Gerson's legacy by his fifteenth- and sixteenth-century heirs, who strengthened its misogynist elements but downplayed his insistence that discerners themselves be men of spiritual experience. Throughout her book, Anderson presents discernment as an intractable problem that admits no easy solutions, and she includes women among the shapers of this discourse, not merely its hapless victims. Her work should become a valuable reference point for anyone interested in late medieval prophets, mystics and visionaries. Unfortunately, though understandably, limitations of space confine Anderson's focus to the continent. Hence she omits such important English contributions as the works of Walter Hilton and that most subtle discerner, Julian of Norwich.