Glossing over the entirety of Elizabeth's reign

The Elizabethans, collected by Allardyce Nicoll, is a really weird but really cool book. It covers a wide variety of topics and only spends a few pages on each - the section on Elizabeth is the longest, I think, and its only 10 pages.

The sections include: The Paradox (a 2-page introduction to the importance of paradox in the Elizabethan period, followed by quotes about paradox and discord from the time period), Queen Elizabeth, The Spheres of Heaven and Earth, Government & Justice, The Church, The Plague, Science, The Arts,  and The Navy.

Each of the sections may be short, but included in each of them is excerpts from primary-source documents.

The section on the Navy may be interesting to Brad, Catherine, and/or Kari. There are some specifics here in the introduction, as well as what appear to be some really great quotes cited in the back.

The section on the plague is short but memorable. The first quote begins: "The purple whip of vengeance, the plague, having beaten many thousands of men, women and children to death, and still marking the people of this city every week by hundreds for the grave, is the only cause that all her inhabitants walk up and down like mourners at some great solemn funeral, the City herself being the chief mourners" (66).

Sami, I think you'd find this helpful. There's even a section of this that is "Orders to be set down by the Lord Mayer and Aldermen of London" in the event of the onset of the plague. This includes the role of Clerks and Sextons, Physicians and Surgeons, the Mending of Pavements, and Interludes and Plays, among other things.

The Elizabethans. Ed. Allardyce Nicoll. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1957. Print.