As 2017 has arrived, and with it the 500th anniversary of the Reformation, publishers will doubtless flood the market with biographies of its instigator, Martin Luther. Alongside the predictably bad biographies filled with hackneyed inaccuracies, biases and half-truths, there will doubtless be some worth reading. Scott Hendrix's will without a doubt be among the very best. Over the past 100 years, biographies of Luther have become something of a cottage industry for printers and scholars alike. Three types stand out. First is the encyclopedic variety, the subtitles of which should read: ‘Everything you wanted to know about Martin Luther but were afraid to ask.’ Here, Martin Brecht's three-volume work dominates the field, and provides a treasure trove of information for all other works, including Hendrix's. Second, there are the masterpieces in intellectual history and theology, among which, in this reviewer's opinion, Luther: Man between God and the Devil by Heiko Oberman (Hendrix's teacher) stands head and shoulders above the rest. A third kind are the popular biographies, which can be recommended to scholars, pastors and laypersons alike and for which the best example has been Roland Bainton's 1950 biography, Here I Stand – until now, as the appearance of Hendrix's well-written, extensively researched biography replaces and surpasses Bainton's out-of-date work. Especially within this third (and most important) category, then, this is the best biography of Luther in English produced over the past sixty-five years. Everyone interested in the Reformation should read it.

Those of us who spend our time rooting around in the detritus of the Reformation do not often find ourselves surprised by what we read in biographies of Luther. As the late David Steinmetz wrote for the back cover of Hendrix's book, however, ‘I did not expect to learn much from reading yet another Luther biography. But I was wrong.’ And this reviewer and student of Steinmetz discovered the same thing. On page after page, Hendrix retells Luther's life story from an exciting new perspective, providing new facts or interpreting old ones in a new light. We no longer encounter a singular thinker and reformer standing alone but a sometimes frail but still brilliant man surrounded by colleagues, supporters and family and pressed by theological enemies and political exigencies. And Hendrix tells his story with a relaxed, inviting style that allows him time to draw readers into some of the most dramatic scenes of the Reformer's life (see, for example, his vivid description of the Leipzig Debates on p. 78) without drowning them in the details. He manages, especially in the first major section of the book (‘Pathways to Reform’ from 1483–1522), to demythologise Luther (see, for example, pp. 33, 39, 61).

Unlike many biographies of Luther, Hendrix does not spend so much time on the young Luther that the middle-aged and old Luther disappears into the background, rather like a curmudgeonly old uncle who is only allowed out in public on Christmas and Easter. Instead, Hendrix carefully surveys the entire scope of Luther's life, warts and all, allowing readers to experience the entire measure of the man, especially in the second part of the biography (‘Pursuit of a Vision’ from 1522 to 1546). At every turn, readers will be disabused of popular myths and given new vantage points from which to view this complex man.

Hendrix also manages to weave the various parts of Luther's life together in a single tapestry, hinted at already in the subtitle. Luther is for Hendrix a ‘visionary reformer’, whose behavior is motivated (and sometimes distorted) by what Hendrix often calls ‘Luther's idealism’ (cf. among many instances, pp. 262 and 282). Using such a word, however, runs the risk of misunderstanding. For the most part, Hendrix does not contrast such ‘idealism’ with, say, philosophical ‘realism’ or Thucydides’ loathsome Athenian pragmatism. What Hendrix defines as the red thread in Luther's life might better be called commitment (and, sometimes, over-commitment) to principles and thus not to (what Luther deems as demonic) powers. This commitment or vision, as Hendrix's masterfully explains, involves at heart Luther's discovery of Christian freedom in the gospel of God's mercy and his paradoxical definition of the life of Christians and the church in the world.

There is one distortion that this Melanchthon specialist would hope that Hendrix could perhaps improve in the second edition. He depends (pp. 166–7) upon an old English translation of Melanchthon's famous Greek letter to his friend, Joachim Camerarius, regarding Luther's marriage. This in itself is not to be criticised, although he could better have referred to Melanchthons Briefwechsel, no. 408, for a more accurate original text. Where it appears from the translation (and from the many biographers who have depended upon it or its German equivalent) that Melanchthon himself took exception to Luther's marriage, the Greek text makes clear that he was trying to answer Camerarius’ deep concerns, not especially Melanchthon's own. Thus, Melanchthon writes:

Clearly some were upset by Luther's marriage, but Melanchthon was hardly among them and, if anything, was defending Luther's action to a somewhat prudish friend.