The antics of the Religious Right in the US provide such wonderful copy for incredulous readers especially in Britain, but also among many Americans, that it is sometimes hard to remember that there are – and have been – other, saner forms of Evangelicalism there. Edwards's book sets out to remedy at least some of the imbalance with an account of one of those other strains, what he calls the Christian Realists, who earlier in the twentieth century attempted to engage with America's developing industrial democracy and the wider Christian world, rather than separating themselves from it as the fundamentalists did. It could have been a more engaging account – Edwards never really defines what made a Realist and why they were so called, nor how many of them there were, what their services and preaching were like, who made up their congregations, nor how influential they were in wider American religious and secular life. Often his book is a rather desiccated study – note to academics: decontextualised quotation can be wearying and is often obfuscatory rather than revelatory – laced with jargon and the sense that the movement consisted chiefly of theologians debating with each other. Sometimes too there are explanations which his doubtless informed readership may already know: T. S. Eliot is described as ‘the expatriate poet’ twice before page 23 and later, by way of variety, as an ‘ecumenical celebrity’. Because Edwards does not define his terms – the Left and Liberalism tend to be used as generalisations – he does not engage with the gradations and contradictions within Evangelicalism: for instance, William Jennings Bryan, who receives only a glancing mention, may have ended his life defending biblical literalism (and making a monkey of himself) at the Scopes Trial, but he was also perhaps the most radical candidate ever to be chosen to run for the presidency – three times – by a major political party and his radicalism was largely defined and shaped by his religious beliefs. The book emphasises usefully the links between the Realists and Evangelicals and Labour politicians in Britain, though Edwards describes Bishop Fulton Sheen and Norman Vincent Peale as, with Billy Graham, the three most recognised 1950s leaders of religious revival in Britain as well as the US – Graham yes, but the other two were probably known in the UK only to the already converted. The book rather peters out in the 1960s, like the ageing protagonists of the movement itself, but it does not really address in much detail why it could not compete with the fundamentalists and their burgeoning mega-churches. Could it be because their message was unable to compare with the certainties and excitements of the charismatic, Pentecostal and non-denominational sects? Maybe the Realists were ultimately too soggy, introspective – and realistic – for their own good.