It goes without saying that the last few years have seen a rising wave of books on Martin Luther, cresting in 2017. Given that he was first and foremost a theologian and biblical scholar, a sizable percentage of the valuable books on him published in recent years have been written from the perspective of church history. Yet Luther's theology was embedded in a wider historical context, and the movement he initiated was more than theological, as reflected in the equally valuable books published from other historiographic perspectives, including the cultural history practiced by Susan Karant-Nunn in this volume of essays.

Dr. Karant-Nunn states that this book is not a biography, and yet there is a tremendous amount of biographical information here, centered on various subjects that come to focus in the phrase “the personal Luther.” Luther is examined in terms of his ego, as reflected in his works; his conscience; his friendship with Frederick the Wise; his relationship with God as heavenly Father; what he had to say about the sex act; his masculinity; his calling as a father; what can be known of his heart; what his death tells us about him (and his age); and, finally, the role that personality (chiefly Luther's) played in the Reformation. In each of the chapters in which these topics are addressed, Dr. Karant-Nunn mines the Weimar edition of Luther's works, which is an inexhaustible source, always capable of surprising the researcher with yet another facet of Luther's personality and career.

Given that this book is a collection of essays written as individual pieces and over a number of years, some stand out more than others. In the estimation of this reviewer, the essays that form the latter half of the book (chapters 6 through 10) are the more engaging. For instance, the essays on Luther's masculinity (chapter 6), on his role as a father (chapter 7), and on his heart (chapter 8) seem to lend themselves more directly to the overarching theme of the “personal” Luther. Here we are introduced to Luther in his private life, out of view of the wider world, but that nevertheless had a direct influence on his public persona and actions. We learn of his “theology of being a man,” and how that played out in his home life in his relations with the remarkable Katharina; we learn of the joy he had in his daughters (and the pain he suffered at the loss of Magdalena), and of his joy in his sons coupled with the disappointment they (at least, Hans) brought to him; and we learn of his heart—of the role of his emotion centered on Jesus—which points toward the influence this side of Luther exercised on later German Pietism. Yet Dr. Karant-Nunn considers a more public aspect of Luther's person, in the shape of his public persona and its role in extending his influence in nontheological ways, which is the connecting thread of the last two chapters of the book. The discussion of Luther's “perfect death” makes the valuable point that it was indeed important to his reputation and the movement in which he was the defining figure that the account of his death should demonstrate that when he passed away, he was not in the throes of agony as he faced the torments of hell, but instead was confident of his standing before his Lord on the basis of Christ's merits. The discussion of his death leads quite naturally to his legacy, which involves the role of Luther's personality as much as his theology in shaping the continued development of Lutheranism in Germany, a point Dr. Karant-Nunn develops by way of comparison to Calvin's personality and his heirs in the Reformed tradition.

The focus in this review on the second half of the book is not to suggest that the first five essays lack interest; but some of them are rather more complex and abstruse, and less connected to each other than the latter five. Nevertheless, this collection as a whole is worthy of consideration by anyone interested in a fuller understanding of Martin Luther, especially as these essays are written from a different perspective than most studies—from the perspective of the personal, more private Luther, but also from the perspective of cultural history. Luther cannot be dealt with only as a theologian, as church historians are said to do; but given the (however limited) reliance of Dr. Karant-Nunn on the work of church historians in this collection, neither (it would seem) can he be understood apart from his calling as a theologian. The history of Luther, and of the Reformation as a whole, requires the contributions of both schools of thought if one intends to understand the complexities of this Reformer and his era.