This publication presents an original approach to the Romance languages in general (although JFLS readers will presumably be primarily concerned with its discussion of French on pp. 145–171). The different languages are discussed and compared by means of a number of specific features deemed typologically pertinent. These are both external: geographical distribution; number of speakers; status; and internal: oral system; nasal vowels; accent; gemination; palatalisation; case-system; use of prepositions to indicate object; articles; partitive; preterite; auxiliaries; clitic subjects; address forms. The advantage of this method is that it standardises the elements examined for each individual language and permits easy cross-comparisons with adjacent or distant relatives in the Romance group. The book opens with a cogent, clear and sensibly balanced treatment of the Romance languages as a collectivity (pp. 13–30) before expanding on the criteria used to classify them (pp. 31–47). Thereafter (pp. 49–271), it deals successively with Portuguese, Spanish, Catalan, Occitan (with a good sociolinguistic discussion of a language which has given rise to much linguistically unhelpful and indeed counter-productive politicisation), French, Rhaeto-Romance, Italian, Sardinian, and Romanian. It finishes with a comparative section (pp. 273–304), a conclusion (pp. 305–308), and a range of supporting materials: bibliography, maps, a summary list of Romance-based Creoles, a glossary of technical terms, the IPA, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in a range of languages, a short textual anthology (poems), an index of languages, and a short guide to the accompanying CD. This contains a series of recordings illustrating phonetic/phonological details (indicated in the book by the use of a marginal symbol), and versions of the Human Rights and poetic texts. The section on French has a good if brief external history and provides a convenient means of comparing (in this instance) French with other Romance languages: from this point of view, it would be a valuable additional element in a traditional history of the language course and would allow one to slip in a fairly easy and painless comparative dimension. The only drawback is the language of the book. It is written in very clear and elegant German, but it would have reached a wider (and especially student) readership around the world had it been in French. It deserves to be more widely read and I would encourage the author and publishers to consider a French version.