This penultimate volume in Pelikan's acclaimed history of Christian doctrine-winner with Volume 3 of the Medieval Academy's prestigious Haskins Medal-encompasses the Reformation and the developments that led to it.

Only in America, and in this case from a Lutheran scholar, could we expect an examination so lacking in parti pris, a survey so perceptive, so free-and, one must say, the result of so much immense labor, so rewardingly presented.-John M. Todd, New York Times Book Review

Never wasting a word or losing a plot line, Pelikan builds on an array of sources that few in our era have the linguistic skill, genius or ambition to master.-Martin E. Marty, America

The use of both primary materials and secondary sources is impressive, and yet it is not too formidable for the intelligent layman.-William S. Barker, Eternity