This is a remarkable contribution to Australian historiography written with verve and is endlessly interesting. Written as part of the bicentennial celebrations of the Bible Society of Australia, the longest continuously running organisation in Australia's history, it is certainly not an institutional history. It is in fact a vernacular story of people and occasions from across the whole spectrum of Australian life from the first settlement to the present. Lake was already known as a distinguished historian but here she shines as a masterful, at times lyrical storyteller. Endless stories of people and occasions show how the Bible shaped conversation: it provided life-guiding encouragement and expletives for protest from rock surfers to an elderly Robert Menzies, Australia's longest serving prime minister. By taking stories from across the range of conversation, literature, art and music in the life of the people of the Commonwealth, Lake shows how the secular and the Christian images of Australia do not comprehend the whole story. Australia has from the beginning been a mix of both, sometimes each trying to ignore the other. She shows the Bible being used in relation to school education from the earlier to the latest times in the nation's history, in the construction of the Commonwealth constitution, in the White Australia policy, and at different times in the Labor and Liberal parties, in judgements of the High Court and in a multitude of other times and place. This is not only a landmark historical book but a really great read.