Just as one should never judge a book by its cover, so should one be careful of making an assumption about a subject. At first glance, the topic of Jesuit Visitors does not seem of particular interest to anyone except those with a niche interest in the society's bureaucracy. However, as this volume convincingly argues, these near-forgotten figures were vital within the Society of Jesus and the position's absence from the historiography needs remedying. Both Thomas McCoog's introduction and Robert Danieluk's opening essay outline the role of the Visitor. Those appointed to the position were representatives of the superior general and granted all equivalent powers, going to a province not just as policemen but to formulate policy, filling the gap between Rome and the peripheries, the general and members of the society throughout the world. A run of deeply interesting contributions follows. Andrés I. Prieto's clear and readable chapter considers the first visitation to Jesuit Peru in the sixteenth century, with its ultimate purpose to decide if the society should even be involved in the colonial enterprise. Eric Nelson also considers wider political ramifications through attempts to rehabilitate the society in France at the start of the seventeenth century, caught as they were between the competing interests of king and general. McCoog follows with the odd case of seventeenth-century English Jesuits, the freedoms of whose colleges in exile from local superiors stoked national tensions. Whereas the Visitor sought Jesuit-style universal uniformity, English Jesuits extolled adaptation. Tadhg Ó hAnnracháin also finds a Visitor navigating ethnic clashes in mid-seventeenth century Ireland, this time between old English Catholics and their Gaelic Irish counterparts. The role of the Visitor slips a little from central casting in Paul Shore's essay on scandals at a Jesuit-run university in seventeenth-century Moravia and Francisco Malta Romeiras's contribution on the suppression of the Jesuits in Portugal, but the position's significance is amply conveyed in Robert Emmett Curran's consideration of the early nineteenth-century Maryland Mission. Once again, issues of national identity required a visitation, this time to sort out clashes between American-born Jesuits and émigré members of the Society. National tensions between empire and colonies, as well as a four-way clash between Belgian, English, Polish and German Jesuits feature strongly in Festo Mkenda's chapter on the Zambesi Mission visitation of 1924, while more disagreements are evident in Klaus Schatz's retelling of the visitation of the province of Lower Germany in 1931. The latter chapter might have benefited from a little more contextualisation, as would David Strong's focus on the visitation of the Australian province in 1961. The volume closes with Oliver Rafferty's excellent study of one of the last Visitors, this time sent to evaluate the English province in the mid-1960s. One small gripe about the volume is the lack of contributor biographies, but overall this is a readable collection that convinces of the importance of the role of the Visitor, with much to interest scholars of religious history and particularly its globalisation. Equally, it makes clear how even in a notionally uniform religious organisation like the Jesuits, national and ethnic identity tensions remained. So, in short, do not let your aversion to management structures put you off a book well worth reading.