Mack P. Holt

Holt accounts for the events that tore French society assunder for seventy years. Holt writes as a social historian; his is not strictly an account of Henri III, Catherine de Medici, Henri IV, the Guise family, etc. Although these do figure into his book, this is not a top-down approach. Holt examines the appeal of Calvinism to the French. What drove French peasants and aristocrats to abandon Catholicsm in favor of the austere religion from Geneva? Why did this conflict become so violent?