The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the sphere of suffering shared, and in this case extended to the death march itself, there is no spiritual or emotional legacy here to offset any reader reluctance. Victorian historian John Anthony Froude once proclaimed, “No people so few in number have scored so deep a mark in the world’s history as the Scots have done.” And no one who has taken this incredible historical trek, from the Highland glens and the factories and slums of Glasgow to the California Gold Rush and the search for the source of the Nile, will ever view Scotland and the Scots—or the modern West—in the same way again. For this is a story not just about Scotland: it is an exciting account of the origins of the modern world and its consequences.

How Scotland invented the modern world | Metro News How Scotland invented the modern world | Metro News

In 2008, he added to his body of work Gandhi and Churchill: The Epic Rivalry that Destroyed an Empire and Forged Our Age, a finalist for the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction. [5]

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Arthur Herman. The New Era of Global Stability: The grand ideological conflicts that began in 1917 are giving way to old-fashioned geopolitics, The Wall Street Journal, Dec. 19, 2017. Another difficulty with the book is its focus on Britain, America and, to a lesser extent, Australia, particularly with reference to 'the Scots' invention of the modern world' for there is scant mention of the rest of Europe, Asia, the Middle East or Africa apart from the impact of the British Empire. I think the modern day peoples of those continents might reasonably take issue with that. Arthur L. Herman (born 1956) is an American popular historian. He currently serves as a senior fellow at Hudson Institute. [1] Biography [ edit ] And finally, render it down to a digestible set of things to be learned and applied from the story. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Herman taught at Sewanee: The University of the South, George Mason University, Georgetown and The Catholic University of America. He was the founder and coordinator of the Western Heritage Program in the Smithsonian's Campus on the Mall lecture series. [3] [4]

How the Scots Invented the Modern World (PDF) Arthur Herman. How the Scots Invented the Modern World

It was both exciting and fulfilling to read the history that led up to the Battle of Culloden and beyond, to meet the historical figures and read the family names from her books in the context of the history she drew on. Though they each resented one another, the English and Scots joined in 1707 to form the Kingdom of Great Britain; the English wanted the Scots controlled and the Scots realized they could not match English power. The Scots immediately benefited from a centralized government that paid little attention to it—for example, inexpensive imports reduced the impacts of famines and allowed a Scottish culture to flourish. Herman calls the Scottish Enlightenment "more robust and original" [3] than the French Enlightenment and that the product of the "Scottish school" was that humans are creatures of their environment, constantly evolving and trying to understand itself via social sciences.The Scots were heavily involved in the British Empire too. They helped to change social problems around the world. My favorite in this section was Charles Napier who, as governor of Sind in India, banned the practice of sutee, (burning a widow on her husband’s funeral pyre). When the local Brahmin priests protested that this was interfering with an important national custom, Napier replied, “My nation also has a custom. When men burn women alive, we hang them. Let us all act according to national custom.”

Arthur L. Herman - Wikipedia Arthur L. Herman - Wikipedia

Flesh out the achievements of the great and small with ample and interesting personal anecdotes, viewpoints, quotes and failures -- all supported by thorough research.

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I get minor thrills when my current books intersect. In Ulysses S. Grant's memoirs, General Winfield Scott gets a lot of coverage. How the Scots informed me that Scott's grandfather fought at Culloden, a pivotal moment for the Scottish Highlanders. I just finished Peter Stark's Astoria, in which Scottish trappers play a key part in the failed experiment to settle the Pacific Northwest. Herman generally employs the Great Man perspective in his work, which is 19th-century historical methodology attributing human events and their outcomes to the singular efforts of great men that has been refined and qualified by such modern thinkers as Sidney Hook. The history of religion in Scotland is central. John Knox, the Scottish Presbytarian church, the conflicts with Catholics supporters of the Jacobite cause, and the Anglican church are described in good detail. There are many many references to Ulster, and Ulster Scots, and the history of the development of these churches in Scotland are essential for understanding the religious landscape of modern Ulster. The book goes in to wonderful historical detail about brilliant individuals who were the product of a social program to bring education to everyone at a time when most people in Europe were illiterate. It discusses such brilliant philosophers as David Hume and Adam Smith, as well as great inventors, such as Watt (well, Watt didn't TECHNICALLY invent the steam engine. He merely improved on the design of Thomas Newcomen's engine.).