From acclaimed historian Barbara Stollberg-Rilinger, an incomparable introduction to this momentous period in the history of Europe

The Holy Roman Empire emerged in the Middle Ages as a loosely integrated union of German states and city-states under the supreme rule of an emperor, and would endure until its dissolution in 1806 during the Napoleonic Wars. Barbara Stollberg-Rilinger provides a concise history of the empire, presenting an interpretation of its unique political culture and remarkably durable institutions. In a narrative spanning three turbulent centuries, Stollberg-Rilinger shows how it was a political body unlike any other, bound together by personal loyalty and reciprocity, tradition and shared purpose, and constantly reenacted by solemn rituals.

Barbara Stollberg-Rilinger is professor and chair of early modern history at the University of Münster in Germany. Her many books include her acclaimed biography of Maria Theresa, which won Germany's prestigious Leipzig Book Fair Prize in 2017, and The Emperor's Old Clothes: Constitutional History and the Symbolic Language of the Holy Roman Empire. Yair Mintzker is professor of history at Princeton University.