Rudolf Vierhaus’s work is much more than a political history of Germany from the Thirty Years’ War to the end of the Seven Years’ War: His study reconstructs the historical structures that marked this age. He examines economic developments, the social system, and cultural life, even as he continues to pay close attention to Germany’s political organization, its war, and political conflicts. German history is presented within both the diverse pattern of its regional life and the larger European context, in order to restore a full analytical complexity to the age of absolutism.