A comprehensive and balanced biography of Martin Luther from one of Germany's leading social and political historians. It paints Luther not as a lone hero, but as a soldier in a mighty struggle for religion and its role in the world; a difficult, contradictory character, who changed the world by virtue of his immense will. Heinz Schilling's major new biography of Luther ... gives the most balanced account of Luther's life to date. Unlike so many biographers of Luther, Schilling is not a theologian or even a church historian by training. He is one of the leading German experts on late medieval and sixteenth-century German history, and he places Luther firmly in the context of his time: a rebel in an age of unheaval ... [review of German edition]