Fought by over a dozen belligerents, the conflicts of the Thirty Years' War are recorded in over ten languages, with documents deposited in scores of archives scattered across Europe. The Thirty Years' War was not only a German civil war but also a confluence of the dynastic struggles between the Habsburgs and their various enemies. This volume is a collaborative effort, wherein the first five chapters are arranged chronologically, and the sixth revises the conventional picture of a devastated Germany. The book is based on numerous secondary sources and published documents, focused on political and diplomatic history, with short but interesting sections on the social, cultural, and economic aspects of the war. It is a tight knit narrative of many threads--political, military, and diplomatic events--resulting in a balanced overview without confusing the reader with the complexities.