'This extraordinary book provides the reader with the best account of late medieval and early modern German history available in any language … This is a post-confessional history in which religion retains its centrality but not its polemical edge, a modern history that has been released from the shackles of modernization, and a history in which ordinary villagers and townsmen ... Read moretake their places in a story that was most often dictated by princes and nobles. And it is a story with a powerful narrative arc. What an achievement.' H. C. Erik Midelfort, University of Virginia 'A commanding and brilliant view of the Reformation era. This masterful book is the new starting point for anyone seeking a fresh and up-to-date understanding of the Germanies, the reformations in religion, and the religious confessions linking the early modern and modern worlds … No one understands the volatile mix of politics, public life and religion better than Tom Brady.' Tom Robisheaux, Duke University 'This is a quite extraordinary manuscript; one of those few books which can truly be termed a masterpiece. Tom Brady is the foremost senior scholar of the Reformation, and he has devoted his career to reshaping the way German Reformation history is understood, by bringing social and political history to bear on a terrain that used to be primarily that of ecclesiastical history. This book is the summation of his life's work. No other scholar could command a similar range and depth of scholarship, and combine it with a completely original, mature vision of the entire period 1400 to 1650.' Lyndal Roper, Balliol College, Oxford University 'Brady's writing is gripping, his scholarship deeply erudite, and his arguments are strongly and persuasively presented …There is no one better to have filled this need than Brady.' H-German '… like no other history of the Holy Roman Empire … this book is interdisciplinary in the most judicious and fruitful ways. It is filled with riveting stories. Brady's analyses are often profound, yet his text includes basic information for the nonspecialist.' Susan C. Karant-Nunn, American Historical Review Show Less