When Garry Wills is not hectoring some central truths of Catholicism, he oftentimes proves one of its best historians, and this latest is a fine example thereof. In this very readable and gripping work, Wills uses the baptismal font as the occasion with which to achieve three main objectives. First, this work acts to introduce the patristic theology of baptism in general and, in particular, the ways in which Ambrose and Augustine converge and diverge in their presentations of this rite. Here Wills draws masterfully not only on their theological writings but on archaeological evidence of their respective cathedrals (thus the many figures throughout) as well as the fourth- and fifth-century cultural contexts that they inhabited. This gives way to the second main goal: to show how the process of baptism in a Roman or Milanese milieu differed from the world of North Africa. According to Wills, ‘Ambrose had a mystical, poetic, and all-inclusive theology of Christian initiation … Augustine, by contrast, had … a “minimalistic” view of baptism, legalistic, almost mechanical’ (p. 138). Given the dual foes of Donatists and Pelagians, Augustine could not present baptism as a pristine break from one's past but needed rather to situate those few seconds of immersion into a larger framework of ecclesial fidelity and a life of humble service. Finally, Wills also provides an excellent synopsis of how Augustine's appropriation of Ambrose's theology developed over the decades of his own episcopacy. As a newly-chrismed cleric, Augustine appears reluctant to borrow too much from his teacher, but later comes to import aspects of Ambrose's theology of coercing the Church's foes into submission, the importance of miracles in confirming the Church's power, as well as invoking the Milanese bishop's (almost unquestionable) authority against the Pelagians. Wills does a first-rate job in covering these and other areas and, as such, this work could easily find a home in any university course on the Fathers, on baptism, or in the hands of any scholar interested in Latin Christianity's concerns and ecclesial practices at the turn of the fifth century.