A recurring theme in the book is the temptation, as real today as in the early centuries of the Church, for Christians to deprive the Cross of Christ of its crucial place in Christian preaching and believing by playing down the "scandal", the stumbling-block, "of the Cross". There are many quotations from authors writing in Latin and Greek, and these are translated. The result is a book which is learned, but not incomprehensible. The sheer offensiveness of preaching, to a hearer of the 2nd century as much as to one from the 20th, that a crucified Jewish gallows-bird is the Saviour of the world, becomes very plain. Perhaps it is worth pointing out that the author takes as his starting point not the Gospel accounts of the Crucifixion, but the proclamation of the Crucifixion found in St.Paul - particularly in 1 Corinthians 1:18 and the verses following; and in Philippians 2:5 to 8. This is not a book about crucifixion in general, as practiced in classical antiquity;nor is it about the medical aspects of crucifixion. The theological importance of the Crucifixion for the the preaching of the Christian Gospel holds the centre of the stage, and everything else is considered in relation to that. This is the sort of book which should do much to help those of us who are Christians to appreciate more fully what is meant by faith in Christ Crucified.