The Reformation

A History

By: Diarmaid MacCulloch

Narrated by: Anne Flosnik

Length: 36 hrs and 11 mins

Publisher's summary

At a time when men and women were prepared to kill - and be killed - for their faith, the Protestant Reformation tore the Western world apart. Acclaimed as the definitive account of these epochal events, Diarmaid MacCulloch's award-winning history brilliantly recreates the religious battles of priests, monarchs, scholars, and politicians - from the zealous Martin Luther and his 95 Theses to the polemical John Calvin to the radical Igantius Loyola, from the tortured Thomas Cranmer to the ambitious Philip II.

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

©2003 Diarmaid MacCulloch (P)2017 Tantor

Critic reviews

"Superb...An essential work of religious history." ( Kirkus)

Fasten your seatbelts...

...it's going to be a bumpy ride!

I read more than a few reviews of this title complaining about the narrator. To be honest, at first I was a little put off by the narration, but I thought -- you know, she kinda sounds like Sister Wendy Beckett. Somehow, making that association clinched it for me.

As for the book itself, it's a treasure trove of research, masterfully laid out. It covers about 150 years of history but also dips further back into early Church history. It is mostly centered around Europe but goes into detail within each country/principality. In addition to religious history, it also touches on political and dynastic changes. The book is scholarly in its depth and breadth but totally accessible to regular readers with an interest in history and religion.

Narrator unqualified

Narrator can't pronounce Isaiah and other simple words from religion/history/geography. Super distracting. Returned audiobook of The Reformation and ordered the physical book. MacCulloch the author is amazing!

An essential piece of history to understand the modern world

Best book I’ve read in years. Political, scientific, and military history of Europe require this *detailed* understanding of religion. Also illuminates today, our schisms, our end-of-the-world obsessions, our 'morals', our weaponizing of thought.
Also illuminates many of the great things of today - our tolerance, our pursuit of scientific truth, our desire to make a better world and be better people, our ability to sacrifice and persevere for beliefs, our ability to change, to adapt, and to strike out on our own if needed.
Highly recommended.

Very biased, but vast

In terms of depth and breadth (geographically and chronologically), this is definitely the best history of the Reformation on Audible and maybe in print. I was shocked by how many regions this book covered and by the great scope of time it covered. It is a scholarly work, not a textbook or popular work, but it will hold your attention as well as any popular history.

The author, Diarmaid MacCulloch, is a leading historian of the Reformation period. Though he claims to be non-biased, this is nonsense and is definitely one of the biggest defects in this book. At the time of writing this, he was non-religious, having parted with the Church of England and, as he says, "lost his faith," over their teachings on sexual mores. He is famous for being a staunch opponent of the Catholic revisionist histories of the reformation period one finds in the works of Eamon Duffy (and more popularly G. J. Meyer's history of the Tudors). The result of MacCulloch's philosophical perspective is a strong bias in this narrative toward non-institutional religious movements and figures—familiarists, anabaptists, etc.—and against institutional religion, whether Catholic, Lutheran, or Reformed. MacCulloch also, for some reason, extends his narrative all the way up to John Paul II, claiming he is some return to the dark ages... This book is great, but some things in it just deserve to go in one ear and out the other.

I would recommend that anyone looking to learn about the reformation read this book, but also balance it out with the very different (much more balanced) perspective one gets from Catholic authors like Carlos Eire (Reformations) or Eamon Duffy (Reformation Divided; Stripping of the Altars) (also on Audible).

The narration is absolutely perfect in my opinion.

Worth listening to at least thrice....

So much information packed into this book... Connects the dots to other things about Christianity I learned elsewhere....

MacCulloch did good with this one...

Research Supreme

I will have to re-read (listen) many times. It opened my mind to the pure & destructive power this subject was on the " Commoner's" lives. Highly Recommend! Well done

Now I see why there is no sample ...

What did you like best about The Reformation? What did you like least?

It is a great story so far, but I will have to buy the book.

What was one of the most memorable moments of The Reformation?

Sadly, when Anne Flosnik started to speak because I spent the first 5 minutes thinking my Kindle malfunctioned and was reading in the non-Whisper synch robotic voice.

What didn’t you like about Anne Flosnik’s performance?

She took theater 101 I guess. She must have made it through the training on enunciation but quit after that. Literally every syllable is emphasized equally. It sounds just like a robot because she pauses between every syllable. I also had to listen to it at 1.5 times the speed.

Do you think The Reformation needs a follow-up book? Why or why not?

It couldn't be any longer ...

Any additional comments?

I will buy the book. The fact that I seldom read a book over 200 pages speaks to both the quality of the book and the horrendous narration.

Please get an audio sample up so people can be forewarned about the reader's performance.

A sweeping opus on the 500th anniversary of Luther's 95 Theses

This is the second book I've "read" by the author, the first being "Christianity: The First 3000 Years". He brings together the myriad dramas, convulsions, upheavals, and, most importantly, ideas which shook Medieval Europe to the core. Despite being a faithful adherent to a confessional tradition which traces it's roots through the Reformation period and disagreeing with the author's own presuppositions and conclusions, he presents the narrative fairly, cogently, and with a scholarly nuance that I respect and enjoy. I heartily commend it.

A Delight for Comparative World Religions Junkies

Incredibly well researched and brimming over with real history chronologically revisited. Plus lots of amazing factoids and sound bites!

Excellent History with some modern ideological annoyances

The history presented here is grand, sweeping, and comprehensive. In its explanations and reviews of intricate theological disputes, it is only exceeded in quality by it historical breadth and depth. There are, however, noticeable modern ideological inflections scattered throughout the text. For the most part, these annoyances can simply be ignored. The last several chapters, however, are so drenched in ideology that the pages would be used as fuel to heat homes in the winter.