This is a history book with a specific remit, and a particular readership in mind. Addressed to acknowledged heirs of the Reformation, especially conservative Evangelicals and students in Christian colleges in the US, it seeks to persuade them that much of what they think they know about the Reformation is mistaken. The agenda is unapologetically presentist, with responsible historical treatment ‘the penultimate goal’ to a reinvigoration of contemporary church life. Thus Payton has trenchant things to say about modern Protestants who fail to follow the reformers in seeing holiness of life as a necessary consequence of justification (‘contemporary Tetzels’), and about those who neglect the status of the church Fathers and ecumenical councils as important, if secondary, authorities alongside Scripture. To readers outside of these circles, some of his correctives – such as on the Christian character of Renaissance humanism, or on the profound disagreement of reformers among themselves – hardly come as a surprise. And Payton's revisionism has distinct limits: the late medieval background here is one of ‘decline’, ‘corruption’, ‘rampant anticlericalism’ and the ‘intellectual tomfoolery’ of scholasticism. The successes of the Counter-Reformation are, somewhat bizarrely, ascribed principally to the willingness of Jesuits to lie about their intentions to Protestant parents enrolling children in their schools. Engagingly written, and theologically learned, this book has many salutary things to say to its intended audience, but it will be of limited classroom use to those of us attempting to teach Reformation history to students formed in very different social and cultural settings.