There are many international examples of harsh, bloody repression of minorities that the postwar well ends to be indifferent... their community (is) being pushed downhill toward oblivion, but since they are not yet tottering at the edge of a cliff (their) community leaders for help...."" So Wakin expresses the qundary of a strange modern micro the society of some four million Copts among twenty-four million Mlems in the ancient land of Egypt. These people, who are certainly ""true Egyptians"", trace their religious beliefs directly back to St. Mark; they classify themselves as ""original Christians and glory in a liturgy that is little changed since earliest times. Doctrinally a world apart, they see no temporal barrier to sharing the same homeland with their Moslem neighbors. But a pluraistic society which would have room for them is apparently not in Egypt's carts the immediate future, and meanwhile the Nasser regime takes very little of their existence, although the Copts have not failed to support it. Wakin's treatment of their communal, clerical, and political attitudes is generally sympathetic.