Carroll's style is to turn everything into an epic; this is a period of history for which it is admirably suited. To say that the Reformation era was eventful and colorful, and that it had a number of significant figures, is to say that a Concorde travels faster than a snail suffering from heat exhaustion. This is well worth reading; the only criticisms I can think of are that it sort of includes the whole text of _Our Lady of Guadeloupe and the Conquest of Darkness_ (although I'm hard-pressed to say how else he could have covered the conquest of the Mexica), and that the second edition removed the text inserted by the Melissa worm ('Twenty-two points, plus triple-word-score, plus fifty points for using all my letters. Game's over. I'm outta here') in the middle of the assassination of Albrecht von Wallenstein -- a moment of such high rhetorical intensity that the word processor declaring it was going home for the day was thoroughly apt.

Still, it's thoroughly recommended. Personally, I had the interesting experience of learning about the Reformation era through Fernand Braudel, then other contemporary historians, then Carroll, and thereby missing the Protestant-hagiography version; but if you've encountered that version (the evil Inquisition, the evil Jesuits, the evil Duke of Alba, etc.), this will fill you in on what the world of the Catholic Reformation looks like from the inside.

(Note that modern secular historians favor the term 'Catholic Reformation' over 'Counter-Reformation' for the internal reforms of the Catholic Church in this era, especially after the Council of Trent; the point is that this was a reform that was going to have happened whether there was a Protestant Reformation or not -- and which was already beginning, especially in Spain, before Martin Luther. Not surprisingly, Carroll follows their lead.) ( )