Though his pontificate ended less than forty years ago, Benedict XV is pope who has reigned during the past hundred years. An unintelligent obscurity, as Phillip Hughes has remarked, surrounds not only his pontificate but the man himself. Walter Peter's Life of Benedict XV is a thorough as it is interesting; it sheds considerable light on this great, but forgotten, man and on many of the subtle, complicated issues with which he dealt during his long years in the Vatican.