The Thirty Years War: Europe's Tragedy

There is one fact about this book that perfectly encapsulates its scope, its goals and the experience of reading it: in a book about a war started in 1618, the starting point is almost a century earlier. It takes, in fact, a third of the book for us to reach the inciting incident of the war.

If all you are looking for is a simple narrative or summary, that should make it clear you must look elsewhere. But if you want a full analysis of all factors that led to, fed into and were caused by the thirty years war, this is required reading.