The East African Revival (often known as the Balokole, Luganda for ‘The Saved’) has been widely recognised as one of the most distinctive and important movements of Christian renewal in twentieth-century Africa. Beginning within the Anglican Church in the 1930s, it has generated a large body of literature: largely testimony from adherents and from enthusiastic sympathisers. More recently historians of East African religion and society have brought new critical insights into the phenomenon. Jason Bruner aims to write a history of the movement ‘from the perspectives of those who converted in its first three decades’ – to let revivalists speak for themselves and to take seriously their account. But, as an historian, he also offers a scholarly analysis of the movement. His concern is to locate the Revival in the fabric of East African society and religion, and to present a theologically informed account of its faith and practice. Bruner lucidly explores the fundamental religious tropes of the Revival, its Christocentric nature, its concentration on sin, conversion and confession, the importance of ‘fellowship’, the necessity of a rigorous ethical life. Bruner illuminates Balokole responses to the rapid social transformations of late colonial Uganda, and the movement's ability to spread along networks created by improved communications and labour migration. Revivalists were concerned to model what they conceived to be Christian patterns of family life, stressing bonds of affinity between husband and wife (in monogamous unions) and imposing a strict discipline on their children. Even the spatial ordering of the home demonstrated the disciplined nature of the new life: houses should be unostentatious but scrupulously clean and tidy, with even the jerry cans (for water and paraffin) carefully arranged in an orderly fashion. The Revival had a lasting impact in secondary schools. At first revivalist students were accused of disorder, flouting respect for authority, and condemned as a disruptive presence; later they became models of respectability and moral discipline, model citizens in a society where ethical standards were in flux. Bruner's historiographical introduction is masterful. Overall, this is a tautly argued, illuminating survey. It cannot encompass all aspects of the movement, nor does it claim to do so. Although a primarily a Ugandan account, it rightly includes material on the birth of the Revival in Rwanda (which is integral to the history of the early Balokole in Uganda itself). However, it omits the very different trajectory of the revival in Northern Uganda, where the revival encountered distinct ethnicities and a less intimate relationship to the Anglican Church. I think Bruner is right to see the Revival as ‘a movement, and not simply as a series of localized revivals’; but this needs to be more thoroughly argued in the light of its very different history in Northern Uganda, as well as among Lutherans and Mennonites of Tanzania, and the Presbyterians and Methodists of Kenya. The later splits within the movement, giving rise to the Bazukufu (the Reawakened), also need to be taken into account. But, such fragmentation largely came after 1962, which is beyond the scope of Bruner's study. Bruner alludes to, but does not himself dwell on, the neglected topic of those revivalists who left the fellowship, unable or unwilling to adhere to its strenuous demands. This is particularly important for the children of Revivalists, many of whom have made significant contributions to other spheres of endeavour in Ugandan society. Bruner, at the end of his book, speculates about possible connections between the moral rigour of the Balokole movement and the public interest provoked by the Uganda Anti-Homosexuality Bill introduced in 2009. This is a complex issue which needs a much more thorough examination. Overall this is a fine contribution to the history of the East African Revival. In particular it magnificently transcends the sometimes sterile debates about whether the East African movement is to be seen primarily as an off-shoot of classic European Protestant Evangelicalism, or as an authentic example of an African spirituality. From the beginning, the Revival was a movement of African agency, addressing local and contemporary issues. Bruner's book is an important contribution to wider debates about Evangelical revivalism as a movement of the global South.