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Rating: 
Summary: Perfect for the first year graduate student
Review: Erickson's work is intelligently written and is perfect for stimulating the first year history graduate student towards broadening his or her thoughts on history and historical figures. That said, the work is also a tedious read that at times is little more than a pedantic stream of the author's consciousness. In the end, one does not really feel that much has been learned about the inner life of Luther, or about his time and place. A worthy work to be sure, but certainly also a minor one of limited value.
Rating:
Summary: Perfect for the first year graduate student
Review: Erickson's work is intelligently written and is perfect for stimulating the first year history graduate student towards broadening his or her thoughts on history and historical figures. That said, the work is also a tedious read that at times is little more than a pedantic stream of the author's consciousness. In the end, one does not really feel that much has been learned about the inner life of Luther, or about his time and place. A worthy work to be sure, but certainly also a minor one of limited value.
Rating: 
Summary: Enlightening & thought provoking, but not for a light reader
Review: Erikson has written a brilliant book about how one man's religious obsession, his desperate need to find a loving God and forever escape a God of devouring terror, was univeralised and turned into history. The notion that man must find God by himself and his Bible has had a huge effect on the Western World. This book articulates some of the most trenchant insights on psychology, history, and religion.
Rating: 
Summary: An example of why "psycho-history" is dead
Review: Granted, Erikson's book makes for a great read, but lacks any real credibility. This book, along with his book on Gandhi, demonstrate that one can read anything into people when seperated by time and space. Take everything you read with a grain of salt. There are many more Luther bios that are more accurate and useful.
Rating:
Summary: Engrossing Standard Work
Review: The father-son relationship Erikson explores here is very interesting. The most convincing aspects of his analysis are those most closely based on Luther's own writings, such as Luther's deep paralyzing dread at celbrating his first mass in front of his earthly father, as he mediates on behalf of that same father with his heavenly father.Erikson's spirit lives on in the same tension found in "Amadeus," where Mozart confronts his father's same brand of wrath--suspecting that his son is wasting himself in something unproductive and immoral. Erickson probably is speculating, in the manner of an archaelogist, when he broods about what Young Man Luther may have witnessed around the house in his violent father's relationship with his mother. Psychiatrists need this kind of book. Taking on the really big personalities helps them understand the rest of us. Helps them use all the gears on the 18-speed; lets them press all the buttons they will never need to service the only vital end of the market for shrink services: the troubled youth market, the only one with the cash to invest in the counseling arts. Before you're too far gone for anyone to care about. Perhaps it also helps the rest of us to escape, to focus on something we don't know much about, and aren't very good at: but to be satisfied anyway. Ibn Khaldun said that was a particular affliction of academics. That's the good news: if you can't bear this book, maybe you're a really talented academic with a bright future. The rest of us are just reading it in an attempt to find meaning in our latest airplane flight. We're developing a fear of facing the pilot on the way out, since he's such an imposing father figure. Then we realize he's repeating cheesy little "good byes" and our confidence returns--he's not challenging us at all, he's one of us. Amen.
Rating: 
Summary: A pioneering work in psychohistory
Review: This is Erikson's breakthrough work in psychohistory. He reads the inner conflicts of Luther and connects them convincingly with great historical events. In this particular case he chooses a historical figure whose violence in some way undermines and contradicts the very religious vocation his life is built upon. Erikson shows how the revolutionary Luther in conflict with his own violent father and himself turns against the world of corrupt medieval indulgence- laden Catholicism and uses his own personal energy and story to create a powerful change in history, the Reformation.
This is an admirable piece of theorizing and research combined and a fascinating read.
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