This is a nifty, short, well-illustrated overview of the history of the symbol of the cross in general, and of Celtic monumental crosses in particular, starting with the early pre-Christian "Market Crosses" (which often aren't cross-shaped at all) to the elaborately knotworked wheel crosses which are most familiar.

This book is small but packed full of information and lovely, clear illustrations; I had to keep reminding myself I wasn't reading a quaintly readable Victorian treatise rather than a modern New Age book. In fact, he repeatedly assures the reader that the wild theorizing about the meaning of symbols will be kept to a minimum; unfortunately, the result is that the occasional (reasonable) theories that do get mentioned end up entirely unsupported. The only other difficulty I had with this book was wishing that the figures would be referenced by number in the text, as sometimes I found myself unsure as to whether a cross being described had an illustration or not. But the book's worth it just for the illustrations themselves, with a variety of examples of early Christian and pagan symbols, as well as plaitwork, knotwork, key, chain, and spiral patterns, and many figures of the historic monumental crosses themselves. ( )