literatigeek

How the Scots Invented the Modern World: The True Story of How Western Europe's Poorest Nation Created Our World and Everything in It by Arthur Herman
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Perhaps a better title for the book would have been "How the Scots made the modern world better." As Arthur Herman even notes in the book, a particularly Scottish characteristic was to take something already in existence and make it better.
The book offers an interesting, and often times amusing, insight to the Scottish input to the Enlightenment era through the revolutionary war. However, the more interesting chapters were those not focused on the Enlightenment era. As someone who finds the era particularly repetitive, the breaks into Scottish literature, the impact of Scottish culture in Canada and Australia, or even the Scottish breakthroughs in medicine and science were more interesting than the philosophy lecture in the middle of the book disguised as the eighth chapter. Particularly, I enjoyed the moments of light-heartedness; the scottish poking fun at themselves. Learning about the source of words like "Redneck", how people reacted to the scottish in other lands, or the lawyer who left his position at court very late in life with the words "Fare ye weel, ye bitches" were the gems you looked for and read to find.
I would think it would be interesting for Mr. Herman to reprint the book with an additional chapter on the recent attempt by Scotland to find independence (as it seems the book's concluding chapter was headed in that direction, and in search of some sort of concrete example).
In all, if you're particularly interested in Scottish culture post-1745 the book is rather interesting. (Especially for someone with Scottish heritage, it was interesting to see the first Scots in America.)

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