Henrike Lähnemann and Eva Schlotheuber, The Life of Nuns: Love, Politics, and Religion in Medieval German Convents. Cambridge: Open Book Publishers, 2024, vi, 199 pp., 38 color ill.

If the present book is representative in any way, then it illustrates pathways toward the future of books at large, whether this is a good development or not. The two authors published a book on late medieval German nuns in 2023 (Berlin: Propyläen), which was quickly sold out and then witnessed a second edition. Encouraged by this success, they agreed to have a slimmed-down (?) version translated into English by Anne Simon, Andrew Dunning, and Cecilia Thon and published by the Open Book Publishers. A whole team of contributors assisted in preparing the manuscript for publication, and the result proves to be quite interesting. There are 38 high-quality color illustrations, and the text at large reads quite well, though there are numerous passages that would need improvements. If I had not found a reference to the three translators, I would have suspected that AI was involved here, which would explain the considerable number of infelicities and mistakes throughout the book.