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Using concise prose, Thomas Kaufmann offers the kind of brief overview that an average reader might plow through in a weekend. Readers who do so may wonder if they didn't learn as much from Kaufmann as they would have learned from a regular-length Luther biography. German-language readers have had access to Kaufmann's original since 2000 and to a revised edition since 2009. Kaufmann's brief biography is at last available in English thanks to the immensely readable translation provided by Peter Krey and James Bratt. Compact, clear, and erudite Luther biographies in English are in fact in short supply. Until now, the best of this small genre included James Nestingen's Martin Luther: A Life (2003) and Martin Marty's Martin Luther (2004). The genre's top tier has now been expanded with the appearance of Kaufmann's work in English.
Kaufmann's version of the Luther-bio-in-short pays considerable attention to the ways in which Luther has been interpreted and memorialized. Indeed, in a general way, Kaufmann covers some of the territory covered in Robert Kolb's excellent Martin Luther as Hero, Prophet,...