Robert Bireley is Professor of History Emeritus at Loyola University, Chicago. He has served as president of the American Catholic Historical Association and on the editorial boards of the Catholic Historical Review and the Renaissance Quarterly. Bireley has been a prolific author in the field of European religious history, with a special interest in the Reformation, Roman Catholicism, and Jesuit history. His books include Politics and Religion in the Age of the Counterreformation: Emperor Ferdinand II, William Lamormaini, S. J., and the Formation of Imperial Policy (1981); The Refashioning of Catholicism, 1450-1700: A Reassessment of the Counterreformation (1999); and The Jesuits and the Thirty Years War: Kings, Courts, and Confessors (Cambridge, 2003). He is the recipient of numerous prestigious fellowships, including fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, the National Humanities Center in Research Triangle Park in North Carolina, and the National Endowment for the Humanities.

1. Boyhood and youth, 1578-98; 2. Early years in Inner Austria, 1598-1608; 3. Toward the succession, 1608-18; 4. The Bohemian Rebellion, 1618-21; 5. Consolidation and expansion, 1621-8; 6. Overreach, 1627-30; 7. Setback, 1631-2; 8. Recovery, 1632-4; 9. Settlement and death, 1635-7; Conclusion.