Book Note: World Upside Down

I just finished reading C. Kavin Rowe's World Upside Down: Reading Acts in the Graeco-Roman Age (Oxford University Press, 2009). Since other summaries by J.R. Daniel Kirk, Gary Anderson, and Mike Bird (an interview) are available online, I will only say that it lives up to the hype. I'm looking forward to the review session devoted to the book at SBL this November.

My one disappointment is that the main text includes many citations of untranslated untransliterated Greek, along with the odd German quote. As a result the book is not suitable as a textbook for an advanced undergraduate course. Too bad, since in most--if not all--cases Rowe's argument would not suffer if he had relegated the Greek to the footnotes.