General surveys and bibliographic tools include Günther Gassmann, Historical Dictionary of Lutheranism (2001); Donald L. Huber, World Lutheranism: A Select Bibliography for English Readers (2000); and Julius Bodensieck (ed.), The Encyclopedia of the Lutheran Church, 3 vol. (1965), a useful reference work that does not always hide its confessional bias. The older work by Conrad Bergendoff, The Church of the Lutheran Reformation: A Historical Survey of Lutheranism (1967), a broad survey of Lutheranism, is useful for information on Lutheranism in the Scandinavian countries. L. DeAne Lagerquist, The Lutherans (1999), is a thorough study of Lutheranism from the Reformation to the present day.
Good treatments of Lutheran history are Eric W. Gritsch, A History of Lutheranism (2002); and Eric Lund (ed.), Documents from the History of Lutheranism, 1517–1750 (2002). Lutheranism in the United States is covered in E. Clifford Nelson, The Rise of World Lutheranism: An American Perspective (1982), a helpful discussion of the cooperation between 20th-century Lutheran churches. The same author also edited a survey of North American Lutheranism, The Lutherans in North America, rev. ed. (1980).
Works on Lutheran theology include Robert Kolb and Timothy J. Wengert (eds.), The Book of Concord: The Confessions of the Evangelical Lutheran Church, trans. from the German by Charles Arand (2000). Edmund Schlink, Theology of the Lutheran Confessions, trans. from the German by Paul F. Koehneke and Herbert J.A. Bouman (1961, reissued 1975; originally published in German, 1940), is a still-useful neoorthodox approach to Lutheran theology. Wilhelm Maurer, Historical Commentary on the Augsburg Confession, trans. by H. George Anderson (1986; originally published in German, 2 vol., 1976–78), offers a thorough study of the basic Lutheran confessional document; while Karl Ferdinand Müller and Walter Blankenburg, (eds.), Leiturgia: Handbuch des evangelischen Gottesdienstes, 5 vol. (1954–70), discusses the Lutheran service both historically and theologically. Concise but useful is Friedrich Mildenberger, Theology of the Lutheran Confessions, ed. by Robert C. Schultz, trans. from the German by Erwin L. Lueker (1986). Paul Althaus, The Theology of Martin Luther (1966, reissued 1996); and Werner Elert, The Structure of Lutheranism (1962, reprinted 2003; originally published in German, 1931), are still valuable.