Ever since the Maid of Orleans led her people into battle, her story has been told and retold by great artists of every era, including William Shakespeare, Voltaire, Mark Twain, George Bernard Shaw, Bertolt Brecht, Robert Bresson, and Luc Besson. Kathryn Harrison’s Joan of Arc- A Life Transfigured gives us a Joan for our time–a shining exemplar of unshakable faith, extraordinary courage, and self-confidence on the battlefield, in the royal court, during a brutally rigged inquisition and imprinsonment, and in the face of her death. Deftly weaving historical fact, myth, folklore, scripture, artitistc representations, and centuries of scholarly and critical interpretation into a compelling narrative, Harrison revitalizes our sense of Joan as one of the greatest heroines in all of human history.