J.’s Reviews > The Reformation > Status Update

~82% through The Reformation — Durant has now widened the lens fully beyond Europe’s internal religious fracture and is sweeping across Spain, the Netherlands, Russia, Persia, the Ottomans, and now African Islam under Suleiman’s era. One of his great strengths is perspective-shifting: the same rulers appear first from the outside, then from within their own incentives, ambitions, fears, and circumstances. History stops feeling like morality theater and starts feeling like layered human reality. Another Durant aphoristic grenade: “Manifest Destiny — desire plus power.” Short, devastating, and broadly applicable far beyond empires.