In the history of eighteenth-century Irish Catholicism, the Society of Jesus plays only a small part. At the time of its suppression in 1773 there were nineteen Jesuits in the country, engaged in parish work and in teaching. Thomas Morrissey's book traces in outline the careers of Thomas Betagh (1738–1811) and two others active in the Dublin diocese. All three were notable for their commitment to two very different educational missions, providing elementary schooling for the city's poor and at the same time maintaining a classical academy that enabled candidates for the priesthood to qualify for admission to the universities of Catholic Europe. A later experiment with sending students instead to Stonyhurst in Lancashire gave rise to a controversy, discussed in some detail, over the status in church law of this revived Jesuit community and the ownership of Irish funds entrusted to it. There is no bibliography and the footnotes are gnomic, but much of the material cited seems to consist of unpublished writings by earlier Jesuit historians preserved in the Society's archives. It is also odd to see a reliance, as secondary sources, on such venerable works as H. A. L. Fisher's A history of Europe. An illustration reveals the existence of at least six manuscript booklets containing Betagh's sermons, but regrettably there is no attempt to analyse these for what clues they might hold to the theological views or pastoral priorities of their author.