Title: Off the Mark...A Mixed Bag of Essays...
Product review: Patrick Collison's Reformation: A History, is off the mark, for it fails to produce the overall effect that the title suggests. It is not a history, in the true sense, for his subject matter is buried too far in obscure theory and it lacks precise modes of chronological sequencing (time-ordering of people, places, things, causes and effects) . This work is more like a mixed bag of essays, which insufficiently treats subjects tied to the Reformation. Also, Collison writes in distasteful, unbalanced, and unpolished prose, and so does not even add a rhetorical coloring to his already stale and humdrum work on the Reformation. Of the hundreds of works to turn to for guidance to knowledge of the Reformation, Collison's is not even suggested among those. Instead, consult Diarmaid MacCulloch, Will Durant, or Phillip Schaff, for authoritative works on the Reformation.
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