For early modernists, the free imperial city of Augsburg is synonymous with notions of toleration and confessional co-existence. The city, after all, gave its name to the most famous religious truce of the Reformation era. Over the generations scholars have flocked to the city, for its rich records provide an unparalleled window on to the religious changes of the sixteenth century. Adam Glenn Hough's book is a welcome contribution to this growing body of literature, for it offers an important corrective to those interested in the broader theme of religious co-existence across the early modern world. Following the lead of Benjamin Kaplan, whose Divided by faith (2007) marked a watershed moment in the study of toleration, historians in recent years have tended to emphasise the role that secular authorities and institutions played as they created critical social spaces for competing religious communities to live side by side. Hough's work is significant as he reasserts the importance of religion in the process of confessional conciliation. His specific targets of study are the evangelical pastors Johann Meckhart and his adopted son Georg who for more than fifty years were active in sixteenth-century Augsburg. Resisting external pressures of confessionalisation, Pastor Johann fashioned what Hough has called the ‘Meckhart Confession’. This was an effort to revise Augsburg's ecclesiastical constitution through the creation of a new church order and catechism in an effort to help the city's evangelicals find common ground within their own community and live alongside their Catholic neighbours. Hough's work is particularly timely as he reminds us that the daily of work of the clergy could also contribute in significant ways to efforts of peacemaking in a confessionally divided city.