I know this question is a little different than the more specific questions that usually get asked on this sub, but I'm looking to do an in depth dive into the history of the Protestant Reformation, but am intimidated by the vast scope of the topic. What can I read that will give me a good grasp of the events leading up to the Reformation, it's immediate effects, and it's long term effects on culture and society?
The "Medieval and Early Modern" section here has some good reads. Diarmid McCullough's book is still probably the one to go for, but it is long ... be warned.
As u/jschooltiger mentioned, Diarmid McCullough provides an excellent overview of the Reformation as a whole. In addition to the sources suggested in the AskHistorians Book List, you might want to check some of these books below.
Philip Benedict, Christ’s Churches Purely Reformed: A Social History of Calvinism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004).
Benjamin Kaplan, Divided by Faith: Religious Conflict and the Practice of Toleration in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge, MA.: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2007).
R. Po-Chia Hsia, The World of Catholic Renewal, 1540-1770, 2nd Edition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005).
Nicholas Terpstra, Religious Refugees in the Early Modern World: An Alternative History of the Reformation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015).
G.H. Williams, The Radical Reformation, 3rd Edition (Kirksville, MO.,: Sixteenth Century Essays and Studies, 1992).
A recent trend in reformation historiography has been to see the religious changes of the sixteenth century as a series of “reformations,” taking into account Catholic reform movements as well as Protestant ones. With that in mind, I’ve included books about the Catholic Reformation as well as Protestant reformations. Hope you find what you’re looking for!
I recommend Carter Lindberg's The European Reformations, it's good on the interactions between the different movements and late mediaeval influences and includes a (relatively short) chapter about the Catholic Reform movement and the Counter-Reformation. Although he has the trajectory of Reformed soteriology as a result of the Arminian controversy basically backward, but that's really not exclusively on him in all fairness and Diarmaid MacCulloch also gets this same point wrong.