Stephen Cooks book on Apocalyptic literature is a new volume in the series Interpreting Biblical Texts, edited by Gene M. Tucker and Charles B. Cousar. The series aims to help serious readers in their experience of reading and interpreting biblical texts and to provide guides for their journeys into textual worlds. The focus is not on the world behind the texts but on the world created by the texts in their engagement with readers. The aim is pedagogical. Therefore, the authors are more concerned about guiding the reader than engaging in debates with other scholars (910). On the whole, Cook conforms to these general aims, and his book should be read in the light of the scope of the series. Because of the special character of the topic of the book, he focuses less on specific tools for interpretation than on general interpretive stances (11): gaining familiarity with some broad he rmeneutical insights and caveats will assist the reader in letting the apocalyptic texts speak in as plain, authentic and theologically relevant a manner as possible. The alien and offensive traits of apocalyptic texts make them an exciting and exacting testing ground for hermeneutics. They are perhaps unique among the Scriptures in yielding their intelligibility only to a disciplined, self-reflective theological interpretation (1112). These hermen eutical aspects are discussed in part 1, Issues in Interpreting Apocalyptic Texts (chs. [Full Review]