The French text of this essay appeared in a collection of papers from a 1990 conference on "The Ethics of the Gift." As the translator notes, this was not the paper Derrida delivered at the conference, but it is an extended treatment of the theme, with particular reference to "the gift of death" specified by the title. The title is one of several points at which the playfulness of Derrida's language is obscured in translation; but Wills does an excellent job of bringing these points to consciousness. The playfulness is important because so much of the book consists of an exposure and violation of limits characteristic of play. It begins with a discussion of an essay by Jan Pato?ka, one of the leaders (along with Vaclav Havel) of the Charta 77 movement in Czechoslovakia before his death in 1977, and builds through an extended engagement with S¯ren Kierkegaard via the sacrifice of Isaac. The book is particularly helpful as a reflection on the denial of history as history of responsibility. The gift of death is an occasion for extended consideration of that denial, its entanglement with the birth of Christianity out of Platonism, and the interconnectedness of religion with secrecy. It ends with a provocative reflection titled "Tout autre est tout autre" that plays with the ambiguity of the French phrase to connect God as wholly other with all others as those in whom one encounters God. This is an important contribution to the critical study of ethics that commends itself to philosophers, social scientists, scholars of religion-and perhaps to a larger audience made curious by the controversy that so often attends Derrida.