This rich, innovative, and well-edited collection of twelve new essays and updated summaries seeks to fill the gap of studying the “world event” of Sennacherib's third campaign from the point of view of historiography and reception history (pp. 1–2). The first of its three sections is dedicated to the “early sources”, providing the reader with a chronological and factual point of departure. In the first study Isaac Kalimi discusses in detail the Chronicler's account, considering his source material, literary means and ideology (pp. 11–50). In the second study, Mordechai Cogan reassesses the Assyrian report in the Rassam Cylinder and, delineating the limits of the data transmitted, he offers a detailed cross-examination of the earliest Assyrian account of Sennacherib's third campaign (pp. 51–74). David Ussishkin then presents a useful, detailed and updated summary of the archaeological evidence for Sennacherib's war in Judah, uncovered at Lachish, Jerusalem, and other Judaean cities, as well as at Sennacherib's palace at Nineveh (pp. 75–103). In the study that closes this section, Jeremy Pope applies Annales school historiographic methods in order to understand the African participation in this “world event”, solely documented by other parties. Trying to integrate the twenty-fifth Dynasty into Nubian studies and Nilo-Sahel history in general, he suggests that its foreign policy towards the Near East was motivated principally by the interrelated concerns of long-distance trade and domestic legitimacy and security (pp. 105–60).

The second section of the collection is dedicated to broader perspectives on the contemporary setting of the Mesopotamian–Levantine confrontation. First, Sennacherib's familial biography is broadly and deliberately reviewed by Eckart Frahm, who boldly, albeit carefully, elaborates on it with initial psychoanalytical speculations, purportedly explaining this ruler's political and other tendencies (pp. 163–222). Second, F. Mario Fales's contribution, which partly parallels those of Cogan and Frahm, suggests that the final result of Sennacherib's third campaign perfectly matched its initial objectives as deduced from his previous military–political moves (pp. 223–48). Closing this section is Peter Dubovský's updated summary of his comprehensive study on the Neo-Assyrian intelligence, supplemented by a survey of Sennacherib's close familiarity with this branch of statecraft, pointing to its undocumented central role in his western campaign (pp. 249–91).

The first four contributions of the third and last section, dedicated to the “after-life” of this “world event”, are learned and updated reviews of the references and reflections of Sennacherib and his Judaean war in four post-biblical corpuses: the Aramaic tradition is reviewed by Tawny L. Holm (pp. 295–323); the Second Temple Jewish historiography and apocalypse by Gerbern S. Oegema (pp. 325–45); Rabbinical literature by Rivka Ulmer (pp. 347–87); and the early Christian Greek literature by Joseph Verheyden (pp. 389–431). Closing this section is Seth Richardson's contribution that makes this section coherent and also constitutes a concluding chapter for the whole book (pp. 433–505). In a synoptic and comprehensive study he suggests viewing the clusters of reflections treated both in the current section of the book, and in its previous parts, as well as reflections of other origins (Assyrian, Hebrew Bible, Aramaic, Egyptian, Greek, Syriac, and Arabic), as islands in the literary “archipelago” of Sennacherib's “after-life” tradition. What makes these islands an archipelago is their shared interest in non-royal elite figures, the unmediated divine involvement, and the geographical mobility of armies, people and information, all understood to express an anxious response to imperialism, inter alia, by means of replacing and forgetting the local traditions of kingship.

A few notes on this otherwise very important volume are in order. The division of the book according to the link of the discussions to the main topic: to the event itself, to its historical setting, and to its later reflections, fits well with its objective to advance the study of Sennacherib's third campaign into the unploughed land of reception history. This division, however, seems not to have been kept strictly enough. First, the line between the “early sources” and the “after-life” is not clear. If the archaeological remains, the Assyrian annals and the basic biblical report (2 Kings 18: 13–16) may justifiably be referred to as “early sources”, the parallel prosaic parts of 2 Kings (18: 17–19: 37) and Isaiah (36–7), as well as the Chronicler's account, may well be treated among the later reflections discussed under the title “after-life”. It is further possible that such a division may also contribute in fine-tuning the “Biblical Hebrew” cluster in Richardson's essay.

Similarly, the comprehensive study of the possible background of the participation of the twenty-fifth Dynasty in the Assyrian's Judaean War is a unique, welcome chapter in such a collection; however, considering the silence of the Kushite sources in regard to this event, it can hardly find its place in the section dedicated to the early sources. Rather it would have been far better placed with the studies grouped in the second section. Dedicated to the broad contemporary historical setting of Sennacherib's Judaean war, this section, in its turn, would have benefited from a discussion dedicated to a relevant topic that falls outside the group of the Assyrian sources. And in line with this: this section would have been more complete were it to contain a study of the situation in the various Levantine provinces and states based on the local evidence, though admittedly this is meagre.

Furthermore, in a collection dedicated to the third campaign of Sennacherib, the absence of a fresh, thorough, summary of the scholarly view of its first biblical account (2 Kings 18–9) in the “early sources” section and somewhere else is somewhat surprising. This lack may, however, be defended in two ways: first, it is partly filled by Kalimi's presentation of the chronicler's “biblical source material” (pp. 23–6) and, second, the volume does not claim to be comprehensive (p. 2). Nevertheless, considering the depth in which other aspects of the early sources – both direct and circumstantial – were covered, this seems to remain a missing piece.

Finally, in accord with its objective, this volume provides the scholar who wishes to study the reception history of Sennacherib's Judaean wars with an informative historical and historiographical point of departure, several useful reviews of the raw material, and an exemplary comprehensive study of it.