David Bebbington's Baptists through the centuries provides those who teach and read in the area of Baptist studies a modern resource that provides a helpful survey of the field. Arriving in 2010, just after Baptists recognised four centuries of formal existence, Bebbington explains that his volume intends to take a sweeping look at how Baptists ‘have adapted to the societies in which they lived as well as their central practices’ (p. 2). Structured in terms of a basic chronology, Baptists through the centuries examines specific issues faced by Baptists over sixteen chapters. Beginning with the longstanding historiographical debate over Baptist origins, Bebbington deftly navigates the mid twentieth-century discussion while also providing some helpful points of clarification, such as the precise way in which he feels that the Arminianism of Smyth and Helwys (the latter he notes should be pronounced ‘Ellis’) came not from Jacob Arminius, but from the Anabaptists. However, he explains that they did not glean their adoption of believer's baptism from the same source. Bebbington's prose is captivating to read, with his chapter, ‘Gospel and race among Baptists’, being especially effective. Bebbington states that his volume, by design, relies heavily on the research of others but his ability to survey issues and themes throughout Baptist history only strengthens this approach and thus the value of this volume. For those who follow the complexities associated with the Southern Baptist Convention in the twentieth century, Bebbington's chapter on Baptist identity provides a description of the collision that occurred between the theological offspring of E. Y. Mullins's experience-based conception of Baptist identity and the views of Evangelical Baptists who saw a commitment to biblical inerrancy as the primary factor for determining identity. Written by someone outside the Southern Baptist context, Bebbington's categorisations are a fair and a helpful starting place for analysis and discussion. As he looks toward the twenty-first century, Bebbington concludes with a grouping of seven strands of Baptist constituents: liberals, classic evangelicals, premillennialists, charismatic renewal, Calvinists, Anabaptists and High Church. In the end, Bebbington recognises that despite diversity and conflict, ‘the spread of the gospel became a central preoccupation of most Baptists from the later eighteenth century onwards’ (p. 276). Baptists through the centuries is not a technical history or a typical textbook and thus might not find use as such in many classrooms. However, Bebbington's careful work and attempt to categorise and define the diverse family called Baptists is laudable and worthy of commendation.