This is an important book which makes a significant contribution to the literature on the Vatican, with particular regard to its external, diplomatic policy. Agostino Casaroli was born in 1914 and entered into service as an archivist in the Catholic Church in 1940, shortly after having obtained his degree in canon law. In 1950 he secured an appointment on the Vatican's Latin American ‘desk’, and then, in 1961, under Pope John xxiii Casaroli was appointed to a position of under-secretary to the Congregazione. From this position he began, in 1963, what Pope Roncalli would describe as a ‘filo sottile’ (‘subtle line’) on the diplomatic front: the Vatican's Ostpolitik in relation to Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Poland, Bulgaria, East Germany, Rumania, the Soviet Union and even Cuba. Casoroli became the architect of a series of specific accords with individual Communist countries regarding religious provision and rights. In 1967 he was made archbishop and head of the Congregazione by Paul vi and finally was appointed by Pope John Paul ii to the post of secretary-of-state to the Vatican, in which capacity he worked from 1976 until his retirement in 1990 at the age of seventy-six. In short, the Vatican's entire Ostpolitik, from its beginnings in the early 1960s until the collapse of the Berlin Wall, was very much shaped and influenced by Casaroli. This volume focuses particularly on the 1960s and 1970s. Following an excellent and lengthy overview of the Vatican's international policy in the 1960s by the editor, Giovanni Barberi analyses in depth the launch of the Vatican's Ostpolitik, and two further chapters analyse the individual cases of Yugoslavia (Roberto Morozzo della Rocca) and Bulgaria (Svetlozar Eldarov). The significance of the so-called ‘Helsinki Process’ for détente and human rights is analysed by Katherine Kunter, and for the two Germanies by Massimo Faggioli. Relations between the Vatican and the Communist countries in the last years of Paul vi's papacy are analysed by Michael Feldkamp and, finally, Adriano Roccucci looks at Moscow's responses to two ‘shifts’ in the Vatican's outlook and subsequent policy: Vatican II under Pope John xxiii on the one hand and the election of Pope John Paul ii on the other. The chapters are all of high quality, drawing on a wealth of sources, and carefully reconstructing the Vatican's activities in different areas and sectors. The book is able to draw on Casaroli's own archive (made available following his death in 1998), on which there is a very useful chapter by Paola Agostinelli and Elena Nironi. There is also a complete anthology of Casaroli's own works compiled by Corrado Truffelli, and the book concludes with several speeches in praise of Casaroli and his lifetime contribution to the Catholic Church, including those of Pope John Paul ii and the former president, Oscar Luigi Scalfaro. The lasting impression of this book is the importance for any historians attempting to explain the demise of Communist Europe of not overlooking the part played by the Vatican, which, in contrast with the glaring visibility of American policy, was markedly ‘subtle’ in its tone and approach. Alberto Melloni's book, therefore, will prove to be an important source not just for church historians but for all diplomatic historians looking to reconstruct relations between east and west in these years.