title: Germany's Northern Challenge: The Holy Roman Empire and the Scandinavian Struggle for the Baltic, 1563-1576 (Studies in Central European Histories)
author: Jason Lavery
description: "This is a most valuable study that illuminates important aspects of imperial politics in the second half of the sixteenth century. It should serve to undermine any view of the Reich after 1555 as a helplessly divided and barely pacified wreck. On the contrary, in Lavery's pages we see an eminently viable statelike system capable of effective defensive action and peaceful survival at a time when much of Western Europe was riven by civil war and religious conflict."<br />Joachim Whaley, <i>Sixteenth Century Journal</i>, 2004.<br /><br />..".the book is a richly documented archival study, based on an impressive array of primary source in Lbeck, Rostock, Gdask, Munich, Bamberg, Berlin, Marburg, Cologne, Wolfenbttel, Vienna, Copenhagen, Stockholm, Dresden, Stralsund, and Greifswald. Four maps, five genealogical tables, a chronology, and an index grace this volume."<br />Marsha Frey, <i>American Historical Review</i>, 2004.<br /><br />"Lavery should be read by all historians of imperial, Scandinavian, and Baltic early modern politics, for he proves the importance of connections among these areas long before Gustavus Adolphus landed upon the shores of Pomerania."<br />Erik Thomson, <i>Austrian History Yearbook</i> 36, 2005.
zlib_text: PERIPHERIES AT THE CENTRE
  
  
  **Studies in Contemporary European History**
  
  Editors:
  
  **Konrad Jarausch** , Lurcy Professor of European Civilization, University of
  North Carolina, Chapel Hill
  
  **Henry Rousso** , Senior Research Fellow at the Institut d’histoire du temps
  présent (Centre national de la recherche scientifique, Paris)
  
  _Recent volumes:_
  
  Volume 27
  
  Peripheries at the Centre: Borderland Schooling in Interwar Europe
  
  _Machteld Venken_
  
  Volume 26
  
  At the Edge of the Wall: Public and Private Spheres in Divided Berlin
  
  _Hanno Hochmuth_
  
  Volume 25
  
  Reconciliation Road: Willy Brandt, Ostpolitik and the Quest for European Peace
  
  _Benedikt Schoenborn_
  
  Volume 24
  
  Resisting Persecution: Jews and Their Petitions during the Holocaust
  
  _Edited by Thomas Pegelow Kaplan and Wolf Gruner_
  
  Volume 23
  
  Peace at All Costs: Catholic Intellectuals, Journalists, and Media in Postwar
  Polish-German Reconciliation
  
  _Annika Elisabet Frieberg_
  
  Volume 22
  
  From Eastern Bloc to European Union: Comparativ