There is a popular view of church history that tells a story in which there was a pure, believing church during the apostolic age and then, for all intents and purposes, there was not a church (except for the Waldensians who alone preserved the church like a manuscript in a clay jar). In this version of church history, the church re-appeared either in the Reformation or perhaps not until the 18th or 19th centuries). This history seems particularly to suit American evangelicals, who don't like history anyway and are distrustful of the past. One of the great motivations for the founding of this republic was to break away from ancient European entanglements and to start afresh, to establish a new "city upon a hill" (John Winthrop's phrase). So it is convenient that the church should effectively re-commence at the same time as the establishment of the American republic.
Even among Reformed folk, who should know better, a similar sort of story circulates. In this version, there was a glorious Reformation in which the church returned to God's Word alone and was led by a warmly spiritual, authentic, God-centered, Christ-centered visionary, John Calvin. This story says that in the early 20th century we were delivered from the darkness and cruelty of Reformed orthodoxy ("scholasticism"—cue the "Snidely Whiplash" theme) by a return to the genuine spirit of the Reformation. Of course, that "genuine spirit" was defined by who ever was telling the story. This is why there are so many folk using the phrase "always reforming" (semper reformanda) who have not the slightest sympathy with John Calvin's theology, piety, or practice.
There's another way of telling the Calvin story. In this version, Calvin was part of a broader patristic, medieval, and Protestant tradition and he taught students and worked with colleagues and those students and colleagues understood Calvin's principles and hermeneutic (way of reading Scripture) and they carried on those principles and approach to Scripture during Calvin's life and after. They applied that theology, piety, and practice to their own circumstances and to new challenges faced by the Reformed Churches.
In the spirit of the "More Than the Institutes (and More Than Calvin)" series here are some recommended titles to introduce you to Calvin's (and the Reformed) theology, piety, and practice after Calvin. Like the list of Calvin titles, this list is not exhaustive.
Protestant Scholasticism: Essays in Reassessment. This volume, the brainchild of Carl Trueman, is not light reading but it is accessible. It remains a valuable collection of seminal essays that seeks to place 16th- and 17th-century Reformed (and Lutheran) theology in its context. In this volume David Steinmetz. Richard Muller, W. Robert Godfrey, David Bagchi, John Platt, Carl Trueman and others offered a coherent alternative to the account of Protestant theology that had dominated the scene until about 1978. It begins with Luther and continues through to the early 18th century.
Richard Muller, After Calvin: Studies in the Development of a Theological Tradition. This is a collection of a very important series of journal articles by the scholar who, more than any other, has revolutionized the study of Reformed theology over the last thirty years. Prior to Muller, with a small number of notable exceptions, the dominant story about Reformed theology was some version of the "Snidely Whiplash" history.
Richard Muller, Christ and the Decree. With this 1986 volume Muller initiated a revolt against the "Calvin vs Calvinists" approach that dominated the study of Reformed theology, piety, and practice. Was classic Reformed theology dominated by the doctrine of the divine decree? Did the Reformed orthodox deviate from Calvin by starting with a (superlapsarian) doctrine of the eternal decree from which they deduced the rest of their theology? Prior to this book most people said yes. After this book it was no longer possible to read the tradition that way, at least not easily.
Richard Muller, Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics. What Robert Preus did for Lutheranism, this four-volume series did for the study of Reformed theology. It is the definitive study of the methods and aims of Reformed theology in the periods of early, high, and late orthodoxy (from c. 1540-c. 1700). For decades English readers could only access classic Reformed theology through an English translation of Heinrich Heppe's Reformed Dogmatics. As valuable as Heppe was, his compressed treatment was idiosyncratic and sometimes leaves the reader with a misleading impression of the nature and theology of Reformed orthodoxy. This series does not cover the entire system but it is more than enough to get one oriented toward a lifetime of recovering classic Reformed theology.
Willem J. Van Asselt, The Federal Theology of Johannes Cocceius. A great deal about Cocceius has been written by those who have never read him! This is not true, of course, of Van Asselt. This is a brilliant study of one of the most important figures in the history of Reformed theology. I recommend this title partly because it is a study in how historical theology should be written and partly because it fundamentally undermines the old story about the nature of Reformed covenant (or federal) theology.
Honorable Mention:
When I began to try to figure out the history of Reformed covenant theology, Lyle Bierma's The Covenant Theology of Caspar Olevian was one of the first works I read (when it was still a PhD diss. long before publication). He does an excellent job of dismantling some of the older histories of covenant theology (e.g. the "two streams" approach) and of introducing the reader to a important source of Reformed federal/covenant theology. To 
Lyle's foundational work, I added a more comprehensive study of Olevianus' theology, Caspar Olevian and the Substance of the Covenant.
Willem J. Van Asselt and Eef Dekker eds., Reformation and Scholasticism: An Ecumenical Enterprise. Another valuable collection of essays growing out of a movement in the Netherlands that parallels the development in the English-speaking world of a renewed interest in the actual sources of Reformed theology in the classical period.
Carl Trueman, John Owen: Reformed Catholic, Renaissance Man. John Owen must be ranked among the most important theologians of English Protestantism. Neglected because his side "lost" in the 17th and 18th centuries, Owen has enjoyed a renewed appreciation in the 20th century and this volume, along with his earlier work, The Claims of Truth: John Owen's Trinitarian Theology (Carlisle: Paternoster, 1998). Strangely, the earlier work has fallen off the face of the earth and I can't it online! If you have a copy, it's a collector's item. To this should be added Sebastian Rehnman's terrific study, Divine Discourse: Theological Methodology of John Owen.
There are other excellent titles to be read among them is Mark Dever's work, Richard Sibbes: Puritanism and Calvinism in Late Elizabethan and Early Stuart England (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 2000). This is another hard-to-find work but worth the effort. Before he was the "nine-marks" guy, Mark produced a very readable and truly outstanding study in English puritanism and Calvinism. This volume may have been the final nail in the coffin of the Calvin vs. the Calvinists approach to Reformed theology.
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