To write a single-volume history of the black monks in Europe from St Benedict to the Reformation is a daunting challenge. The last scholarly history of the Benedictines to be published, by Dom Philibert Schmitz in the 1940s and '50 s – albeit taking the story down to modern times – required seven tomes. James G. Clark's new history of the black monks for Boydell's Monastic Orders series is therefore a valiant undertaking. Clark sets out to cover his broad canvas by a mixture of chronological and thematic chapters. Chapter i, ‘The making of a European order’, surveys recent scholarship on the Benedictine Rule and its adoption by religious communities in the early Middle Ages. There follow three chapters on ‘Observance’, ‘Society’ and ‘Culture’, dealing with internal life, relations with the outside world and monastic learning; and the volume concludes with chapters on ‘The later Middle Ages’ and ‘Reformations’. On the whole this structure works well, providing a sense of how the Benedictines developed over time while also allowing fuller discussion of important recurring themes in the order's history. The thematic chapters are impressively wide-ranging and, although some topics are necessarily handled summarily, the more extended treatment of a number of subjects – including liturgy, prayer and monastic scholarship – is highly accomplished. A particular feature of the book is the sustained attention given to the period after c.1300, an era which is often quickly passed over in surveys of monastic history. Clark rejects any notion of late medieval decline, and argues for the renewed vigour of monastic life in the years around 1500 – manifested by buoyant recruitment, liturgical efflorescence and engagement with new intellectual trends. This picture largely convinces, although it is mainly drawn from a small group of abbeys from England and the reformed congregations of fifteenth-century Europe. The extent to which the history of the black monks in late medieval France or Iberia (for example) fits this model is unclear. The concluding chapter, on the traumatic history of the order in the sixteenth century, also offers a number of interesting perspectives, emphasising the tenacity of the black monks and the variety of experience across Europe. Despite the breadth of his coverage, Clark's analysis is generally assured and never superficial. Inevitably there is not enough space to develop every important theme, and some readers may feel that certain subjects deserve more prominence than they are accorded – such as the early history of Cluny, art and architecture, Benedictine nuns or the development of the order in northern, eastern and Mediterranean Europe. There also remains the question of whether a focus on a single ‘order’ is the most fruitful way to explore the history of early medieval monasticism (when, as Clark shows, monastic observances and identities were extremely fluid) or the later Middle Ages (when there was arguably relatively little difference between orders). But Clark has fulfilled his brief admirably, advancing a distinctive and intensively-researched interpretation of the order's history, which does full justice to the remarkable and enduring influence of the Benedictine way of life in medieval Europe.