This book aims to introduce the general reader to the first episode of the Thirty Years War, the Bohemian Revolt, from the defenestration on 23 May 1618 at Prague Castle, to the Habsburg victory at the Battle of the White Mountain, near Prague, on 8 November 1620. In order to put the revolt into its proper perspective, the author devotes the first six chapters, almost half of the book, to a comprehensive introduction, covering many aspects of the early modern history of the Holy Roman Empire as well as of Bohemia and Central Europe. He sets out his reasons for this approach in his first chapter, entitled “The Origins of the Thirty Years War?” Here, he is pointing to the extremely complicated international background of the war, which is obviously so perplexing to the historian that posing the problem itself deserves a question mark. In the second chapter the most important political institutions of the empire are briefly presented, together with the religious and political positions of Protestant as well as Catholic powers in the empire. In his concise summary of recent historiography, the author very sensibly does not want to name either inner tensions in the empire or international political instability as “the” cause of the outbreak of the Thirty Years War. The factual origins of the war, he claims, must be sought in Bohemia.

Before the author depicts the Prague defenestration and its immediate aftermath, however, there are four more introductory chapters on, respectively, Bohemia and the Habsburg lands from the Hussite period onward, the Counter-Reformation and ensuing problems with the Protestant subjects in the Habsburg lands, the troubles between Emperor Rudolf II and his brother Matthias, and, finally, the short reign of Matthias as emperor and king of Bohemia, and the succession of Ferdinand II to both august offices (1619).

Having set the stage, the author proceeds to deal with the defenestration as an act of insurrection against Emperor Matthias and his Catholic political representatives in the kingdom of Bohemia. His account of the defenestration is for the most part based on the memoirs of Jaroslav Martinic, one of the victims. More interesting is the author's discussion of whether the perpetrators had planned the defenestration. A plot would have aimed to carry a clear message to Matthias that he should stop disregarding the Letter of Majesty (1609), by which Bohemian Protestants had been granted freedom of religion. After picking apart arguments in favor of a plot put forward by Anton Gindely in the nineteenth century and, according to the author, the source of most if not all later interpretations, the author concludes that it is still an open question. There might have been a preconceived plan, but the defenestration could also have been the result of a spontaneous outburst of anger.

The next three chapters tell the tale of the revolt and the following war, the rule of Frederick V of the Palatinate as “Winter King” of Bohemia, the policy of the new emperor Ferdinand II, the disappointingly difficult quest for allies by the insurgents, and the defeat on White Mountain by Habsburg and Bavarian forces, followed by the subjugation of Bohemia and the invasion of the Palatinate. A last chapter outlines the course of the Thirty Years War until about 1625, when it had developed into a truly European armed conflict, and is followed by a short epilogue.

The author, or his publisher, claims that the book draws on recent research. This is slightly problematic. The author seems to have no Czech, which means that classic contributions in that language were inaccessible to him, such as Josef Janáček's book on Rudolf II, Josef Pekař’s and Kamil Krofta's books on White Mountain, Josef Petráň’s publication on the execution of the main rebels, or, more recently, Petr Vorel's history of the kingdom of Bohemia from 1526 to 1618. Sometimes the author builds his arguments on older works where recent publications are available. For instance, for his account of the feud between Rudolf II and Matthias he uses works by Anton Gindely and Moriz Ritter, obviously unaware that in 2010 Václav Bůžek edited an excellent conference volume on the same subject, in German. Perhaps the publication, in 2014, of an equally excellent conference volume edited by Jaroslava Hausenblasová and others, on the Letter of Majesty, also in German, came too late to be included.