Owen Cummings has written a timely book about men whose lives have made a substantive contribution to the understanding of the eucharist. These "eucharistic doctors," who are not doctors in the formal sense of the term, are nonetheless doctors in the broad Christian tradition of thinking about the eucharist. From the patristic period, through the medieval period to the Reformation and post-Reformation era, to the modern era, this book is an accessible, popular introduction to the broad eucharistic tradition. However it contains enough sufficient scholarly apparatus to permit readers to go further if they wish to. The "doctors" treated, including Hippolytus, Ambrose, Thomas Aquinas, John Calvin, and George Herbert, representing different geographical locations, time periods, languages, and Christian traditions, have this in common: they recognized the eucharist as central—the very heart of Christian faith. —no other book in English on the history of eucharistic theology covers the same ground as this one —written in accessible language †