A review by blustocking
Heretics and Believers: A History of the English Reformation by Peter Marshall

5.0

By far my favorite overview of the English reformation. Marshall is both a brilliant scholar and incredibly readable. What I enjoyed most about this book is his claim (with which I agree) that the meaning of the reformation is found, as he puts it, in the struggle. Marshall sees the process as a national conversation, fraught at times, which continues to shape the world today. He does a fantastic job of showing us that, contrary to popular wisdom, the reformation was not a linear or progressive move. It was not an exchange of the barbaric and primitive for the rational and progressive but a series of events that came and went in fits and starts and which, even today, doesn't carry everyone along with it. Marshall also shines when focusing on the state violence that accompanied religious change during the reigns of Henry, Edward, and Elizabeth, something many scholars overlook in their zeal to catalog the crimes of "Bloody Mary".

This was definitely a fantastic book that demands a close reading despite its nearly 600 pages. Thanks to the clear and, at times humorous, writing, you won't find that too much of a chore.