This invaluable sliver of a book delivers two things at once, for both of which teachers and students ought to be very grateful. First, for those whose essay deadlines will not permit them to dive into Ronnie Hsia's definitive 2010 biography of Matteo Ricci, here is a brief crib on the subject prepared by the author himself: a forty-page introduction which takes the story from Vasco da Gama to the Vatican's opening of Ricci's cause for beatification in 2014. The leading scholars in a field are not often willing to do this work of distillation, and those who are willing do not always do it well: no such problems here. But what you will buy this book for is the eighty-six pages of documents that follow: short extracts, mostly one or two pages (none longer than four), most of them from documents never before available in English, many of them from documents never before available in any European language. As Hsia notes, ‘unless one is fluent in Italian, Portuguese, and Chinese, little of this fascinating history is available’: happily, he is. Students will find these nuggets invaluable, and scholars will only be frustrated by the necessary brevity and selection which teases us with the sense of how much more there is out there. As well as the wonderful glimpses of Ricci through Chinese eyes, which show us the sense of exotic novelty that he exploited so effectively, the lasting impression is of the sheer intellectual ambition of Ricci's project. He came to be convinced that Confucianism was as compatible with Christianity as was Aristotelianism, if only some new Aquinas could complete an equally masterful work of synthesis. He modestly set the process in motion himself. And since both China's and Catholicism's histories are measured in long centuries, it is plainly still too soon to say what the outcome will be.