[RegulatorCountry]

You might want to try Ken Follett's The Pillars Of The Earth too, then, if you haven't read it already. Not your typical Follett paperback, it's an immense book. It's historical fiction set in the decades leading up to Henry VIII's break with Rome, and features a great deal of cathedral building and political/church intrigue, not that there was much way to distinguish the two at the time.

[To Hell With Poverty]

That’s so weird...my mother was just reading that book. She says she had read it about 20 years ago and had forgotten until she began rereading it and realized it was awfully familiar...well I’ll have her hold onto it for me!