As writing and specialist studies on Christian mission have proliferated, there has been a growing need for a single-volume overview of developments in this century. This widely-acclaimed book gives historical focus and perspective to mission by concentrating on the leading figures of each decade, beginning with the leading up to the Edinburgh Conference of 1910 and including treatment of the other great missionary conferences. German mission theory between the wars (1918–1939) is addressed, as are the writings of Roland Allen and D. J. Fleming. In Part II (1940–1990) the responses to the religious pluralism of the modern world, Hindu, Buddhist, Jew, and Muslim, which emerged before the conferences of 1939, are pursued through the writings of figures such as Stephen Neill and Kenneth Cragg, the documents of Vatican II, and the Lausanne Conference of 1974, concluding with the varied responses of writers such as John Hick and Leslie Newbigin.