This reference volume, edited by John Merritt (previously director of the Salvation Army's Southern Historical Center in Atlanta, Georgia) aims to educate both the general public and church historian about the mission and ministry of this worldwide evangelical movement. As Merritt points out in the preface, there is a pressing need to enlighten readers about a religious body that has usually been misunderstood by the average person in the pews and the academy (p. xi). The dictionary's 368 entries, written by more than 150 individuals affiliated to the denomination, provide some valuable information on the history of the organisation in various countries, the nature and development of Salvationist doctrines and practices and the contributions of important figures from the Army's distant and recent past. These entries are supplemented by a fairly good bibliography of relevant books and articles appearing under several thematic headings. A short bibliographical essay also offers a helpful overview of some recent scholarship on the organisation. Notwithstanding the occasional factual error, especially in the entries on India and southern Africa, this reference work should serve as a useful point of departure for the general reader interested in knowing more about the Salvation Army. Such a volume, however, will be less appealing to historians and other scholars working in the area of religion. While rich in the descriptive and the factual, many of the entries betray little awareness of the growing and sophisticated body of research on the Salvation Army in particular and evangelicalism in general. Consequently, most of the dictionary's contributors do little to situate or interpret the organisation within its historical, theological and global contexts. Furthermore, the dictionary remains markedly silent on several significant issues, such as the function and future of the denomination's militaristic structure and identity, the evolving relationship between Salvationists and their surrounding societies, and the patterns of Army growth and decline around the world. Given the Salvation Army's historic success in securing converts in the global south, it is also surprising that the dictionary contains so few biographical sketches from this part of the world. Like so many other denominations, the Army's growth in places like Africa and India during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries owed a great deal to indigenous leaders, but we read very little about them in this lengthy text. The Historical dictionary of the Salvation Army certainly brings together a number of useful and interesting facts, and a few entries offer some critical insights into the denomination's nature and identity, but scholars of religion will be left waiting for a general reference work that does justice to this worldwide Christian organisation.