A wide-ranging but nevertheless helpfully detailed account of some of the major lines of Christian thought and doctrinal development over 2000 years. Lane supports his analysis of each thinker with selected brief quotes to illustrate his point, and has generously selected from a range of different traditions. However, he is sometimes partisan to the point where I felt his work should have been subtitled `from an evangelical perspective'. The author's views are particularly intrusive on Cyprian's style of leadership (as having paved the way for `authoritarian' Catholicism), on Abelard's views of atonement, and on John Henry Newman's thought in general. He is sometimes over-indulgent, too, of what one suspects are pet (and relatively minor) themes - the nature of the Eucharist in the thought of various Reformation figures, for example. Overall, I felt there could have been more on social themes, like attitudes towards war and peace, or women, and correspondingly less on some doctrinal issues. But an invaluable reference source, nonetheless, on some 140 thinkers, movements and epochal moments in the life of the church.