As the most spectacular event in the German Reformation, the Anabaptist kingdom of Münster has attracted a great deal of polemical, literary and musical attention over the centuries. In scholarship, however, a more balanced and accurate picture of the events only began to emerge in the 1960s and 1970s, with the groundbreaking work of Karl-Heinz Kirchhoff. Beyond the melodrama of evangelical movement, radical reform, the introduction of rebaptism, the siege, the proclamation of a New Israel, followed by the establishment of prophecy, Old Testament kingship and polygamy, and ending with the fall of the millenarian regime and the slaughter of its leaders, historical scholarship has now reconstructed the social structure, religious sensibilities and the power struggles that lay behind the intense expectations of the final judgement. Ralf Klötzer summarised this scholarship in his Die Täuferherrschaft von Münster (Münster 1992), and Lutterbach's book represents a new synthesis, striking a good balance between analysis and narrative. In six succinct chapters, Lutterbach takes the reader chronologically from the late medieval Catholic city through the evangelical movement, the work of the radical preacher Bernd Rothmann, the opposition between gilds and city council, the coming of the Dutch Anabaptist prophets Jan Matthys and Jan van Leiden, the establishment of the Anabaptist kingdom, the siege, the fall of the community and the aftermath. A good bibliography and well-chosen illustrations combine to make this an ideal introduction to this fascinating and complex episode in Reformation history.