This is an impressively scholarly and important book. It surveys the Lives of reformers written in the immediate aftermath of the Reformation, covering the obvious names – Luther, Calvin, Beza, Melanchthon and Zwingli – and a host of somewhat lesser lights from Switzerland and Germany – Jacques Le Vasseur, Andreas Bodenstein von Karlstadt, Florimond de Raemond, Simon Fontaine, Wolfgang Capito. The key finding of Backus' research is that the more celebrated the name the less likely the Life is to be based on factual evidence. All Lives, whether written by convinced believers or hostile detractors certain that the subject was a heretic, were, whatever their authors imagined they were really doing, based on established patterns. This goes beyond simply portraying the subject as saintly or arrogant and deluded, often tormented by hitherto undiscovered sins (Catholic Lives of Luther and Beza represented them as licentious and depraved, infecting their followers and communities with sin). Biographers were also affected by the need to portray the particular religious community of their Life rooted in a godly community, depending for their success on the support of magistrates, or misleading and undermining a long-established godliness. The result is that most of the Lives of the key figures cannot be taken as anything other than exemplary, closely related to the tradition of saints' Lives or the instructive nature of the parallel Lives inaugurated by Plutarch. The more obscure the Life, the more likely it is to contain at least some real details. The book is clearly the work of many years and should be read not simply by students of ecclesiastical history but by anyone interested in early modern Life-writing.