Title: Very Unimpressive
Product review: I'm a big fan of the Modern Library series, and of Collinson's work in general, but the only virtue of this book is its brevity. It is certainly not for the general reader who wants an introduction to the Reformation: Collinson leaves too many basic ideas and concepts unexplained, and too many phrases in Latin untranslated. A symptomatic example: He writes, "We are nearly at the end of the chapter on Calvinism in which we have yet to define Calvinism" (p. 100). Not a very useful approach! The best parts of the book are its grounding in historiography (how historians' interpretations of the Reformation have changed over time) and its bibliography. Its major weakness, other than those already noted, is that it does not provide a sense of what people actually thought about religion, other than the insightful - but pithy - comment that the Reformation substituted the Ten Commandments for the Seven Deadly Sins (p. 13). It's not worth the time or the price.
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