So yeah. Have different standards for each group. Its not really a double standard after all….

Thanks for the warning, though I confess that I am more relaxed about details when someone historical wrote them than when an author uses them today. I wonder if that’s fair. Without documentation, any biography is lost.

Nothing as complex as the overthrow of the papacy in England happens for just ONE reason. There was lust after Anne (Henry), desire for power (Henry and nobility), greed for land (Henry, nobility, and gentry), and a genuine desire to return to Biblical grounds for corporate worship and teaching within the church itself all played a major part. Throw in the printing press, the control of the Pope by Charles V, Henry’s extravagent spending at court, the pride England had lost in losing so many wars (diplomatic and otherwise) to France and Spain, the puritan faction within England that had been calling for reform for decades, and the freedom of religious expression gained in the last few hundred years by women in England… no, lust was far from the only cause. And also among the less interesting in my mind. I enjoy the politics of the whole situation as much as the religious arguments made.

Never read Alison Wier; what do you like most about her writing? Her works seem to have a more feminist slant than most. By intellectually honest, do you mean presenting multiple possibilities in one scenario (a trademark of other female writers like Mary M. Luke), or more open to other opinions? Honestly, I havn’t read them because the people who recommended them to me did so on the grounds of hey-cool-lots-of-grapic-premarital-behavior than of historical detail.

I would add to the reading list Alison Wier’s books. I find her biographies not only well written, but much more intellectually honest. Her “Wives” and “Children” books are great reading. She pays special attention to detail using everything from laundry lists to love letters to weave a tale well told. Thanks for this review!

And a “timeline of world history” book that I borrowed from the library. A massive tome, it had every time period in the world covered with relative accuracy (due to being from the 50s, even King Soloman was featured). That might be helpful for an overveiw that would let you compare Indian and Chinese developments. I was comparing Middle Eastern and European developments, and learned alot about other continents at the same time. Sparse about the details, but an overveiw never hurts.

Oh and if anyone knows any good books about the history of China and/or India, let me know. I’m looking for ancient history to quasi-modern (early 20th century). Both secular and religious histories.

There is a four-person biography by John Piper that includes Cranmer and Calvin and Luther, but I forget the title. Its a good overveiw of the Reformation, and probably has the best one-page-overveiw of the Tudor period I’ve seen, from a reformation perspective anyway.