For historians across a number of fields, this book by thirteen scholars from five countries (Australia, Denmark, England, France and the USA) will be a welcome addition to the scholarly literature on the many facets of John of Salisbury. Its multiple authorship is well suited to the complexity of its subject – a man who, in the words of his epitaph, combined the teachings of Paul, Aristotle, Plato and Cicero, and also, one should add, the juristic principles of Roman law. Following the editors' introduction, the book is divided into four parts: ‘Historical Context’ (three chapters: John and the schools, relations with Becket, John as ecclesiastical administrator); ‘John of Salisbury as a Writer’ (three chapters: John as writer, use of classical antiquity, as writer of history); ‘John of Salisbury and the Intellectual World of the 12th Century’ (five chapters: John and law, political theory, science and knowledge, ethics, theology); and ‘John of Salisbury and his Readers’ (one chapter, on the afterlife of Policraticus). Particularly stimulating are the chapters by Cédric Giraud and Constant Mews on the schools, Karen Bollermann and Cary J. Nederman on relations with Becket, Yves Sassier on law, Nederman on political theory, Christophe Grellard on theology, and Frédérique Lachaud on the influence of Policraticus. The approach throughout is critical and probing, always thought-provoking, but not always convincing in detail. On the dating of John's Ex insperato (ep. cccv), for example, Bollermann/Nederman are right to place it somewhat later than ‘early 1171’ (proposed by Millor and Brooke), but their arguments for ‘late 1172–early 1173’ (p. 85) are not persuasive. John's claim that Becket's murder was already well known does not require so late a date. Its probable recipient, John of Poitiers, is likely to have heard the news well before Easter 1171, since its details were known in the French kingdom by mid-January, proclaimed to the council assembled by William of Sens on 24 January, and carried south to the papal court in Tusculum, being publicised at every halt along the way; the phrase ‘utramque prouinciam Anglorum’ referred to the ecclesiastical provinces of Canterbury and York, not to ‘Henry's continental domains, as well as the island kingdom proper’ (p. 83); John's one-sentence list of generic miracles, suspiciously close to Matthew xi.5, contains no chronological markers; there is no reference to the so-called ‘stalled canonization’, and the unidentified ‘bull’ (p. 84 n. 86) could not have been known to John, since it was part of a responsum (July 1172) to the king of Sweden, which did not enter the legal tradition until the late 1180s. Neither these nor other questionable statements (for example, Winroth did not argue that the Decretum ‘may have been composed earlier than one assumed for a long time’ [p.21], but the opposite; St Bernard was not ‘bishop of Clairvaux’ [p. 223]) affect the overall quality of the anthology, however. Its purpose, to provide a vade mecum to lead readers into critical encounters with the paradoxes of the life, outlook and writings of the enigmatic John of Salisbury, is fully realised.