This book is a collection of thirteen articles, all previously published between 1992 and 2007. Despite the volume's title, only five of these focus specifically on the ancient traditions of the Dormition and Assumption of the Virgin Mary. The remaining eight articles deal with various topics related to different aspects of the representation of Mary in Christian literature, ranging from the Protevangelium of James to the Hypomnestikon of James, to images of Mary as spouse of Christ in the medieval west. There is very little then in this volume that is new (although some of the articles appear to have had their bibliographies updated here and there), and the fact that all of these items are already available elsewhere will likely make this volume attractive only to the most comprehensive research libraries, particularly in light of its very high price. The only original elements of the book are its preface and introduction. The latter briefly surveys some of the most important works on the Virgin's Dormition and Assumption that have been published since Mimouni's own important monograph on this topic, including much of my own work, which it regularly evaluates negatively. The preface, moreover, is unfortunately marred by personal attacks upon this present reviewer. Among other things, the preface refers to me on the first page as a ‘scholar’, with quotation marks (p. ix), a lamentable choice that can only be taken as designed to impugn my credentials and the value of my publications. Likewise the preface describes my monograph on the ancient Dormition traditions (Oxford 2002), as ‘an extremely aggressive and polemical critique’ of the author's own monograph that is marked by ‘a gleefully belligerent tone’ (p. ix). I certainly would not deny that my critique of Mimouni's earlier work was thoroughgoing, and I still maintain that its hypotheses and interpretations were in need of substantial correction (an opinion in which it would seem that I was not alone). While I am sorry that such scholarly criticism has upset Mimouni, I nevertheless sharply reject these characterisations. And in the absence of a more constructive response to the critique presented in my monograph, I will leave it to readers to judge for themselves what is scholarship and what polemic.