Description
The Dangerous Birth of the Modern World
HARRY REID
448pp Hardback
'Reid breathes life into the extraordinary personalities and writes with fluency and pace.' Tom Devine
'Each reader of this fine book will draw their own conclusions ... I do commend it to a wide audience.' Keith Patrick Cardinal O'Brien, Archbishop of St Andrews and Edinburgh
'Harry Reid is a gifted journalist, and this book was just waiting to be written by him. We need a new and accessible look at the Reformation in all its revolutionary complexity, and this is it. It's a smashing read.' Richard Holloway
'Reformation is a book to be devoutly devoured. It is written with Harry Reid's journalistic flair, but coloured by a scholarly undertone that adds weight and substance. The great characters and events of one of the most influential movements in history have found in Reid a chronicler and debater worthy of their stature - brilliant, complex and fallible as that was.' Rosemary Goring, The Herald
About the book
500 years ago, Europe went through one of the most remarkable and turbulent periods in its history. The lines of political and theological power were rewritten in ways that were nuanced, subtle and philosophical, but bloody massacre and destruction also left scars visible across the world ...
Reformation tells the story of martyrs, persecutions, danger and escape, degradation and wickedness, heroism, nobility, betrayal, destruction, spiritual yearning, social renewal and visionary democratic innovation. Some regard the Reformation as a disaster; others as the most positive movement in world history.
A gripping story featuring Martin Luther, John Calvin, Henry VII, Henry VIII, John Knox, Mary Queen of Scots, Queen Elizabeth and many others is brought vividly to life by Harry Reid.
Absorbing and insightful, this book offers a deep and engaging analysis of events that still echo loudly today.
Special Features
- Timeline of events
- Tudor and Stewart Genealogy
- Biographies of key players
- Quotations from key players
- List of Popes, with dates
- List of key Scottish martyrdoms