This is an English version of Federico Barbierato's Politici e ateisti: percorsi della miscredenza a Venezia tra Sei e Settecento (Milan 2006); but neither author nor publisher so indicate. The identity of the translator, Frank Gordon, is hidden in the acknowledgements where he is praised for improving on the Italian version. Also misleadingly, the hatter Bortolo Zorzi and his books, denounced in 1737 and tried from 1739, are not discussed until the end of the book (pp. 280–335); then an appendix lists and largely identifies his seventy-one prohibited books (in Latin, Italian and French, including many foreign authors such as Bayle, Pascal, Erasmus, Buchanan). Barbierato provides us with a fascinatingly rich account and analyses of a whole variety of people and publications challenging orthodoxies – religious, political, moral and social. The investigators, working on neighbourly denunciations and self-denunciations, were from the Venetian Inquisition tribunal, but also from the inquisitors of state and the Council of Ten. The accused came from the Terraferma as well as from Venice and further afield: nobles, academicians, professionals, artisans, clergy and nuns. The bountiful trial records show the city alive with intellectual debate, scurrilous, obscene and blasphemous comment – printed and oral. Adding to the centuries-old targets (the sacraments, the cult of saints, images, purgatory etc.), by the late seventeenth century we find more open and vociferous challenges to such as Marian concepts, marriage and virginity (womanising was no sin); the nature of the soul was debated and mocked, like smoke from a cooking pot (p. 69). The hat shop was a centre for debate and book circulation – among ‘free metaphysicians’ (p. xxxii) – as much as in previously studied bookshops. Much stimulus for heterodoxy came from sermons, intentionally or accidentally, while clergy challenged some doctrines. Nunneries witnessed ‘rebellious unrest’, fostered by wide outside contacts that challenged strict enclosure (pp. 248–9). Foreign imports were readily added to local subversive printing. The Spanish ambassador circulated anti-papal literature. The Venetian Sant'Uffizio tribunal was largely subservient to the state over censorship and controls, but Barbierato argues that given its composite structure it vacillated between moderation and repression, and relieved tension between the Republic and Rome (pp. 249–64). As I and others have suggested, printers and booksellers were not in great fear of the inquisitors (pp. 268–9), while they and readers/owners could successfully plead ignorance of what was offensive. The inquisition ‘no longer aroused much terror or mystery’, as the Paduan inquisitor bemoaned in a letter to his Venetian colleague in 1664 (p. 251). There were and are problems of what was satire and bravado, what genuine disbelief. The evidence here (exemplified with very generous quotation), supports Barbierato's conclusion that ‘the formation of solid arguments in favour of atheism and irreligiousness’ (p. 253) accelerated through the seventeenth century. Lucretius’ work and atomist theories were demonstrably important, feeding Libertinism. Among the devout Quietism flourished and worried the hierarchy, as ‘mysticism adrift’, undisciplined mental prayer and sexuality co-mingled (pp. 189–206), as elsewhere in northern Italy. Hatter Zorzi, and another, after lengthy enquiries and lethargic delays, were eventually in 1744 sentenced to five years imprisonment, but dated from their original arrest. Subversive discourse continued.