Martyrs and Murderers: The Guise Family and the Making of Europe

“Carroll sees the Guises as big players, not just on the French scene, but elsewhere in Europe…Carroll also stresses that the Guises never relinquished their hopes to recover the kingdoms of Naples and of Sicily, although this created an awkward situation while they were allied with Spain and Philip II…Carroll disabuses the reader of all notions that modern nationalism, or modern ideas of patriotism, or Marxist class conflict, are going to offer useful tools for understanding that remote period. The frames of reference of people back then included none of those things.” Read more...

The best books on Henri IV of France

Vincent Pitts, Historian