There are few people as important to the shaping of the modern world as Martin Luther. History has tended to remember him as an enemy of supreme authority, but that's not an accurate assessment—Luther's fight against the Catholic Church wasn't motivated by anti-authority sentiments, but by a love of God's Word and the truth of salvation found there. His Protestant Reformation wasn't philosophical, but theological in its scope and nature.
But who was he as a man? In Luther: Biography of a Reformer, Frederick Nohl sets out to show both the public and private Luther, who he was at home as well as in the pulpit and standing before the Diet of Worms. Nohl's narrative reads like a novel, but doesn't focus only on events in Luther's life: he also provides the social, theological, political, and cultural background in which the great man of God was raised and lived, and against which he ultimately rebelled.
This quality hardcover edition features sturdy glossed pages and several full-color still shots from the 2003 film Luther starring Joseph Fiennes as the Reformer. A timeline in the back helps readers keep events in context. Nohl's book isn't as good as the classic Here I Stand by Roland Bainton, but it is historically solid, engagingly written, and theologically grounded. If you've never read more than the Wikipedia page on Luther, this is an excellent place to start learning about this crucial Church figure.