Summer of Fire and Blood

The German Peasants' War

By: Lyndal Roper

Narrated by: Rose Akroyd

In this “extraordinary and brilliant book” (Helen Castor, author of She-Wolves), a prize-winning historian offers the definitive account of the sixteenth-century uprising that revolutionized Europe

The German Peasants’ War was the greatest popular uprising in Western Europe before the French Revolution. In 1524 and 1525, it swept across Germany with astonishing speed as well over a hundred thousand people massed in armed bands to demand a new and more egalitarian order. The peasants took control of vast areas of southern and middle Germany, torching and plundering the monasteries, convents, and castles that stood in their way. But they proved no match for the forces of the lords, who put down the revolt by slaying somewhere between seventy and a hundred thousand peasants in just over two months.

In Summer of Fire and Blood, the first history of the German Peasants’ War in a generation, historian Lyndal Roper exposes the far-reaching ramifications of this rebellion. Though the war’s victors portrayed the uprising as naive and inchoate, Roper reveals a mass movement that sought to make good on the radical potential of the Protestant Reformation. By recovering what the people themselves felt and believed, Summer of Fire and Blood reconstructs the thrilling, tragic story of the peasants’ fight to change the world.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.

©2025 Lyndal Roper (P)2025 Basic Books

Critic reviews

“This is a riveting account of a seismic event in German history that conveys a real sense of why so many ordinary people thought they could change the world. Lyndal Roper writes beautifully and displays a compassionate understanding for the protagonists on both sides of this complex and bloody struggle.”—Peter Wilson, author of The Thirty Years War

“Summer of Fire and Blood is an extraordinary and brilliant book. In Roper’s evocatively beautiful, crystal-clear prose, the complex landscapes of early sixteenth-century Germany—physical, psychological, spiritual, social, and political—unfold before our eyes. She shows us the dreams and deeds that shaped the Peasants’ War, the greatest popular revolt in western Europe before the French Revolution, and the ways in which that war shaped the future that followed. This is a profound account of an attempt to change the world, a sensational narrative that is both human and humane, illuminating, resonant, and unsettling.”—Helen Castor, author of She-Wolves

“Summer of Fire and Blood brings the drama, violence, and contingency of the German Peasants’ War to vivid life thanks to the unparalleled scholarly and writing skills of historian Roper. There is simply no more compelling or insightful account of this tumultuous mass uprising.”—Joel F. Harrington, author of The Faithful Executioner

A Lost History Recovered

Tells the story of German peasants who dreamed of a different world based on brotherhood and risked their lives to achieve it.