Lee Palmer Wandel's approach to a new history of the Reformation admirably incorporates the rich archival research in the last fifty years, recognizes the diversity within both evangelical and catholic communities, and insists on not letting one position define that of others. In addition, the author draws out the challenges to basic European assumptions and categories of understanding (for instance, space, time, original sin, property) caused by the Encounter with indigenous peoples in “The New World.” Noting the important role of printing and reading in a movement that held to text as authority, Wandel shows how that emphasis inaccurately “cast predecessors as illiterate,” diverted attention from “the bitterly contested views of incarnation and its implications,” and obscured the importance evangelicals, themselves, placed on practice (7–8). The book documents the emergence of “an understanding of Christianity as something spoken, something believed”—something that resided within a person, that shaped their conduct—rather than residing in buildings or objects, such as bells, and crucifixes (13). This personal redefinition of what it meant to be Christian divided nations, redrawing the map of Europe, and families. By 1600 the powerful myth of a unified Christendom, though never true, was gone forever.