At a time when men and women were prepared to kill—and be killed—for their faith, the Reformation tore the western world apart. Acclaimed as the definitive account of these epochal events, Diarmaid MacCulloch's history brilliant re-creates the religious battles of priests, monarchs, scholars and politicians, from the zealous Luther to the radical Loyola, from the tortured Cranmer to the ambitious Philip II.

Weaving together the many strands of Reformation and Counter-Reformation, ranging widely across Europe and even to the New World, MacCulloch also reveals as never before how these upheavals affected everyday lives—overturning ideas of love, sex, death and the supernatural, and shaping the modern age.