How the Scots Invented the Modern World PDF Download

Author: Arthur Herman
Publisher: Crown
ISBN: 0307420957
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 482

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Book Description
An exciting account of the origins of the modern world Who formed the first literate society? Who invented our modern ideas of democracy and free market capitalism? The Scots. As historian and author Arthur Herman reveals, in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries Scotland made crucial contributions to science, philosophy, literature, education, medicine, commerce, and politics—contributions that have formed and nurtured the modern West ever since. Herman has charted a fascinating journey across the centuries of Scottish history. Here is the untold story of how John Knox and the Church of Scotland laid the foundation for our modern idea of democracy; how the Scottish Enlightenment helped to inspire both the American Revolution and the U.S. Constitution; and how thousands of Scottish immigrants left their homes to create the American frontier, the Australian outback, and the British Empire in India and Hong Kong. How the Scots Invented the Modern World reveals how Scottish genius for creating the basic ideas and institutions of modern life stamped the lives of a series of remarkable historical figures, from James Watt and Adam Smith to Andrew Carnegie and Arthur Conan Doyle, and how Scottish heroes continue to inspire our contemporary culture, from William “Braveheart” Wallace to James Bond. And no one who takes this incredible historical trek will ever view the Scots—or the modern West—in the same way again.

Author: Jonathan Green
Publisher: Skyhorse Publishing Inc.
ISBN: 1616080639
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 185

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Book Description
Why is the tartan so important? What is worn under a kilt? How much ofthe story in Braveheart is real? How do you make haggis?

Author: Michael Fry
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 1466865482
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Book Description
Ever since they first set foot in the new world alongside the Viking explorers, the Scots have left their mark. In this entertaining and informative book, historian Michael Fry shows how Americans of Scottish heritage helped shape this country, from its founding days to the present. They were courageous pioneers, history-changing revolutionaries, great Presidents, doughty fighters, inspiring writers, learned teachers, intrepid explorers, daring frontiersmen, and of course buccaneering businessmen, media moguls, and capitalists throughout American history. The Scots' unflappable spirit and hardy disposition helped them take root among the earliest settlements and become some of the British colonies' foremost traders. During the Revolution, the teachings of the great Scottish philosophers and economists would help to shape the democracy that thrived in America as in no other part of the world. America may have separated from the British Empire, but the Scottish influence on the young continent never left. Armed with an inimitable range of historical knowledge, Fry charts the exchange of ideas and values between Scotland and America that led to many of the greatest achievements in business, science, and the arts. Finally, he takes readers into the twentieth century, in which the Scots serve as the ideal example of a people that have embraced globalization without losing their sense of history, culture and national identity. Scottish Americans have been incomparable innovators in every branch of American society, and their fascinating story is brilliantly captured in this new book by one of Scotland's leading historians. How the Scots Made America is not only a must-read for all those with Scottish ancestry but for anyone interested in knowing the full story behind the roots of the American way of life.

Author: Hugh Trevor-Roper
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300176538
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 328

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This book argues that while Anglo-Saxon culture has given rise to virtually no myths at all, myth has played a central role in the historical development of Scottish identity. Hugh Trevor-Roper explores three myths across 400 years of Scottish history: the political myth of the "ancient constitution" of Scotland; the literary myth, including Walter Scott as well as Ossian and ancient poetry; and the sartorial myth of tartan and the kilt, invented--ironically, by Englishmen--in quite modern times. Trevor-Roper reveals myth as an often deliberate cultural construction used to enshrine a people's identity. While his treatment of Scottish myth is highly critical, indeed debunking, he shows how the ritualization and domestication of Scotland's myths as local color diverted the Scottish intelligentsia from the path that led German intellectuals to a dangerous myth of racial supremacy. This compelling manuscript was left unpublished on Trevor-Roper's death in 2003 and is now made available for the first time. Written with characteristic elegance, lucidity, and wit, and containing defiant and challenging opinions, it will absorb and provoke Scottish readers while intriguing many others. "I believe that the whole history of Scotland has been coloured by myth; and that myth, in Scotland, is never driven out by reality, or by reason, but lingers on until another myth has been discovered, or elaborated, to replace it."-Hugh Trevor-Roper

Author: Alistair Moffat
Publisher: Birlinn
ISBN: 085790020X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 314

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Book Description
History has always mattered to Scots, and rarely more so than now at the outset of a new century, with a new census appearing in 2011 and after more than ten years of a new parliament. An almost limitless archive of our history lies hidden inside our bodies and we carry the ancient story of Scotland around with us. The mushrooming of genetic studies, of DNA analysis, is rewriting our history in spectacular fashion. In The Scots: A Genetic Journey, Alistair Moffat explores the history that is printed on our genes, and in a remarkable new approach, uncovers the detail of where we are from, who we are and in so doing colour vividly a DNA map of Scotland.

Author: Magnus Magnusson
Publisher: Grove Press
ISBN: 9780802139320
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 798

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Book Description
Chronicles the social, economic, and political history of Scotland, starting with its earliest peoples in 7000 B.C. and wrapping up with a discussion of eighteenth-century author Sir Walter Scott.

Author: Arthur Herman
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 468

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Drawing on the most recent research, but written for the ordinary reader, this book looks at the influence of Scotland and the ideas of the Scottish Enlightenment upon western culture.

Author: James Buchan
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 0061870609
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 468

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Book Description
In the early eighteenth century, Edinburgh was a filthy backwater town synonymous with poverty and disease. Yet by century's end, it had become the marvel of modern Europe, home to the finest minds of the day and their breathtaking innovations in architecture, politics, science, the arts, and economics—all of which continue to echo loudly today. Adam Smith penned The Wealth of Nations. James Boswell produced The Life of Samuel Johnson. Alongside them, pioneers such as David Hume, Robert Burns, James Hutton, and Sir Walter Scott transformed the way we understand our perceptions and feelings, sickness and health, relations between the sexes, the natural world, and the purpose of existence. In Crowded with Genius, James Buchan beautifully reconstructs the intimate geographic scale and boundless intellectual milieu of Enlightenment Edinburgh. With the scholarship of a historian and the elegance of a novelist, he tells the story of the triumph of this unlikely town and the men whose vision brought it into being.

Author: Robert Wolgemuth
Publisher: B&H Publishing Group
ISBN: 1087740487
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 177

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Book Description
You may think you’re too old to run fast, but you’re not too old to run well. When the lead runner starts his final lap in a long-distance race, the starter fires his pistol for the second time. This signals the start of the gun lap—the last chance to leave it all out on the track. “Gun Lap” is for men who are running their last lap. Or maybe younger men who are looking ahead to their gun lap, but want to live the rest of their lives with purpose and strength. This is no small thing. In fact, it’s a big deal, because we only get one chance at this life. The author of the New Testament book of Hebrews agrees...wrote, “Let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us” (12:1 CSB). Perseverance. No word better describes the goal of this race…every lap…including the last one. “Gun Lap” will help you pay close attention to the strides you have left.

Author: Caroline McCracken-Flesher
Publisher: Bucknell University Press
ISBN: 1611483751
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 209

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Book Description
Out of the mainstream but ahead of the tide, that is Scottish Science Fiction. Science Fiction emphasizes “progress” through technology, advanced mental states, or future times. How does Scotland, often considered a land of the past, lead in Science Fiction? “Left behind” by international politics, Scots have cultivated alternate places and different times as sites of identity so that Scotland can seem a futuristic fiction itself. This book explores the tensions between science and a particular society that produce an innovative science fiction. Essays consider Scottish thermodynamics, Celtic myth, the rigors of religious “conversion,” Scotland’s fractured politics yet civil society, its languages of alterity (Scots, Gaelic, allegory, poetry), and the lure of the future. From Peter Pan and Dr. Jekyll to the poetry of Edwin Morgan and the worlds of Muriel Spark, Ken Macleod, or Iain M. Banks, Scotland’s creative complex yields a literature that models the future for Science Fiction.