Collegeville Church History Time-Line Book

This was an eye-opening book for me. I have found out that half of my ancestors came from Germany in the 1800's and I wanted to know more about what was going on in Germany at that time. I was really engrossed in the conflict between Protestants and Catholics and the Kulturkampf, the officially-sanctioned cultural struggle against the Catholic Church. It seemed that the Catholic Church became the poster child for backward, Medieval ways, and the Protestant Church took on the mantle of modern, progressive, personal development (Bildung). Fascinating conflict of concepts. It has actually spurred me to start a course in German to understand the throw-way phrases and book titles used in the text. One comment I would make on the text--it was sometimes ponderous to read, being in scholarly erudite phrasing. It reminds me of when I was in Law School and there was a movement afoot for "Plain English for Lawyers," trying to get lawyers to speak in less obscure language. There should be a "Plain English for Scholars." Do we really have to translate "the confessional divide" into "different belief systems," or other obscure phrases?