Thomas Kaufmann, professor of church history at Göttingen, is the author of many studies on Luther and the Reformation, not least his massive survey Geschichte der Reformation (2009). In this collection, intended as a mid-career balance-sheet, he updates ten essays previously printed (between 1991 and 2011) but adds six new ones, including an introductory chapter designed to set forth his own vision of what constituted the beginnings of the Reformation. While accepting the plurality and diversity of Reforming beliefs and endeavours in their initial phase, now a commonplace of Anglo-American scholarship, Kaufmann insists that a unity may still be discerned, albeit requiring interpretation within a dynamic of communication and unfolding perception. For Kaufmann, context is all-important, with contingency and reception as significant as credo and conviction. The six new essays, only a flavour of which can be given here, demonstrate this approach, which does not, however, disavow genuine turning-points or caesurae. Luther's doctrine of justification by faith alone (subsequently refined in the light of the humanist-influenced sacramentarianism of the south German and Swiss Reformers) made clear that the demand for reform could no longer be satisfied by or within the Church or its hierarchy but only from without, marked by the centre-staging of the laity as embracers and transmitters of evangelical beliefs. In the first section of the book, on constructions of tradition, the new essay on theocratic visions of Reform stands out in its sweeping review of pre-Reformation concepts visible in, for instance, the Reformation of Emperor Sigismund, models of theocratic action in the Bundschuh revolts and Peasants’ War, to the realisation of a theocracy on earth in the Anabaptist Kingdom of Zion in Münster. Two caveats, however, must be entered: important essays in English are overlooked, as is the question whether the rebellious peasants truly understood concepts of godly justice. Here, as in other essays in the volume, despite Kaufmann's emphasis on contextualisation, the real historical background of events is sometimes downplayed, though that does not hold good for his penetrating analysis of the historical background to Luther's Ninety-Five Theses. Equally new is the author's exploration of the crucial role played by students in the spread of evangelical doctrines in both Wittenberg and Erfurt, with an excursus on Ulrich Hugwald in Basle. Another new essay examines the problem which many radicals had with the normative claims of Scripture as opposed to the inspiration of personal revelation through the Spirit, and the ways in which they sought outwardly to differentiate (or separate) themselves from mainstream evangelicals (for instance by distinctive clothing). A short review cannot do justice to the richness of this collection of essays, grounded in profound scholarship. Readers should, however, be aware of Kaufmann's two trademarks: his self-indulgent barrage of footnotes (often miniature essays in themselves), and his consciously elevated prose style, which makes no concessions to those less learned than himself.