The past twelve years have seen a succession of essay collections on Richard Hooker so the editor of this volume, Torrance Kirby, is right to ask in his introduction whether there is room for any more. He can be confident, though, that he has answered this question in the positive. The design of the present work ensures that it is the most useful of the recent collections. It aims to provide a comprehensive and systematic introduction to Hooker's life, work, thought and reputation, and does this through twenty essays that cover all of these areas, and the whole span of Hooker's works. Given the recent debate on Hooker's relationship to the Reformed tradition, Kirby is also to be commended for selecting contributors from across the scholarly divide, so that these essays present a wide range of perspectives. Inevitably, therefore, some of the chapters are distinctly partisan (and this applies, amongst others, to the two key chapters on sin and grace, and scriptural hermeneutics). Highlights of the volume are a welcome reissue of Diarmaid MacCulloch's major study of Hooker's reputation; Debora Shuger's subtly nuanced, intelligent essay on faith and assurance; David Neelands's excellent discussion of Christology and the sacraments (now the standard account), together with another significant piece on predestination; and Dean Kernan's ground-breaking essay on jurisdiction and the keys, looking at material too little known and examined.