Reformations and the West

The Reformation certainly didn’t simply spring from the mind of Martin Luther. But as a historical development, it has been the subject of polemics for 500 years: not just between Catholics and Protestants, but also, over the past century, between historians and sociologists with disparate views on how the modern world emerged. Any serious study of the Reformation’s origins and impact consequently requires a willingness to traverse a veritable minefield of longstanding theological and historiographical arguments. In his comprehensive Reformations: The Early Modern World, 1450-1650, the Yale historian Carlos M.N. Eire does that and more. The book is likely to become one of the definitive studies of this period.