Markus Friedrich provides the first comprehensive English-language history of the Society of Jesus written by a non-Catholic scholar, tracing the order from Ignatius of Loyola's founding in 1540 through its suppression, restoration, and continuing influence. Friedrich, a historian at the University of Hamburg, examines the Jesuits not primarily as a religious order but as a social and cultural phenomenon: how they organized themselves, how they educated generations of European elites, how they adapted to and transformed cultures from Brazil to Japan, and how they generated both admiration and suspicion that erupted in their dramatic suppression in 1773. The book explores Jesuit contributions to science, art, and scholarship alongside their political entanglements with monarchs and popes. Friedrich examines the 'black legend' of Jesuit scheming that Protestant and Enlightenment polemicists constructed, assessing what was exaggerated and what was accurate about charges of manipulation and equivocation. He traces the order's suppression under pressure from Catholic monarchs, its survival in Russia and Prussia, and its restoration in 1814 in a transformed form. The book contextualizes the Jesuits within European expansion, showing how their missions participated in and sometimes resisted colonial violence. Friedrich writes for general readers interested in European history, providing accessible narrative while engaging scholarly debates.