This book is a meticulous reconstruction of a little over a decade in English Medieval History. Its author, Graeme White, holds the chair of the faculty of History at University College, Chester. Yet rather than fitting comfortably within the traditional niche of interpretation of the accomplishments of kings Stephen and Henry II, as his position might suggest, he shares the perceptions of the late W. L. Warren and of Emilie Amt that Stephen was no nincompoop, and that his successor was not the ingenious monarch once imagined. White, like Warren, does not merely make connections between reigns, he follows the processes that flow through and beyond them.