The relationship between city and state forms a common thread in the oeuvre of Marc Boone. On the occasion of his honourable retirement, his students have collected some of his most innovative and influential essays in this volume. Its main merit is that it makes his work more accessible to an international audience. Some of the articles were previously only printed in Dutch or French in difficult to find edited volumes and conference proceedings. Hence, these works often did not receive the attention they deserved in international studies, a problem now solved by the publication of this book. The articles also provide an interesting overview of the evolution of Boone's research. Because of his influence in the field, they give insight into shifts in the socio-political historiography on late medieval cities in the Low Countries as a whole. The volume showcases Boone's complete oeuvre with a full and impressive bibliography, spanning no less than 30 pages.

The volume consists of three parts, each centred around one of Boone's research interests. The first part focuses on his older studies into the financial and fiscal policy of late medieval Flemish cities. The first three articles, a triptych of sorts, link the fiscal policies, mainly of Ghent, to the interests of urban elite families. The city, the largest one in the county of Flanders and the Low Countries, has always been a favourite subject of Boone, making his case-studies useful for comparative research into other large cities in late medieval Europe. Boone adeptly shows how different fiscal and financial practices, respectively indirect tax farming, the use of gifts and bribes in intra-urban politics and other tax systems such as annuities, were all dictated by the interests of leading families. Hence, these practices supported internal cohesion within the urban government. As such, his oldest research already reflects his interest in urban politics and the power relations between city and state. The fourth article, on the Florentine banker Tommaso Portinari and his dealings with the Burgundian state, feels somewhat like an excursus to the preceding triptych. However, it does illustrates Boone's extensive knowledge of the financial policies of the time and his skilfulness in employing these to critically approach accepted ideas in research.

The second part, titled ‘Modernity, space and conflict’ bundles together some of the research Boone is probably best known for. The importance of his article with Maarten Prak on ‘The great and the little traditions of urban revolt’ to the research agenda of urban historians cannot be overstated. The essay kickstarted research into the ‘little tradition’ of intra-urban revolt – urbanites protesting against their urban governors – which would later prove strongly influential in the field. Boone's research interests further developed into (urban) political culture. Testimony of that are the two articles focusing on direct and indirect interventions by the prince and his subjects in urban space. Placing his historiographical piece on the idea of the medieval city as a hotbed of modernity between these two thematically linked articles seems odd. A more logical order would perhaps have been to include it at the end of the second part in order to suit both the thematic and chronological flow of the volume.

The third part on private life and sexuality showcases Boone's excursions into social history. Although only two articles are republished here, his influence on this field is in no way less significant. The first article provides an account of the private life of one of the leading bourgeois of fifteenth-century Ghent, who regularly frequented negotiations between the city and the Burgundian court. In the second, Boone evaluates the harsh punishment of sodomites in Bruges as part of the Burgundian theatre state. Both essays reveal Boone's skill in connecting city and state within his scholarship.

Unfortunately, the lack of an editor's introduction leaves the reader to guess the rationale behind the selection of articles. Readers familiar with the field might find the roots of large parts of current scholarship on late medieval cities in the Southern Low Countries – the ‘real school’ of medievalists he engendered, as stated by the editors (p. 7) – in almost all of the articles. Non-expert readers, however, might find it more difficult to grasp the importance and inventiveness of Boone's work. This could have been remedied with an introduction to the content, either a general one or through short notes preceding each part. This would have helped the reader to appreciate the articles in their historiographical context. The older articles particularly show traces of their time. For example, the proposition that prosopography ‘is often the only sound methodological approach by which to arrive at conclusions based on matters of social history’ (p. 81) would perhaps not be so easily accepted today. Boone himself would disprove the point in his later research, but such clarifications by the editors would have formed a real asset to the volume's scientific value. The value attached to it by the publisher, reflected by its high selling price, unfortunately does not support the book's goal to make Boone's work widely available and accessible. These remarks do not take away from the merit of compiling the work of the influential and innovative scholar Marc Boone has become. As a whole, the volume provides an interesting and atypical introduction into the research of the late medieval cities in the Low Countries. As such, it will become a must-read for any students new to the field.