New Book on Scotland from Library

[Bugbear]

I should also add that T.M. Devine's scholarship in Scotland's Empire is a much better than Arthur Herman's How The Scots Invented The Modern World on Scotland and its influence during the Enlightenment.

Well... Devine does bring up Arthur Herman's book in the first chapter... I'm not in a position to criticize the book, but I read it a while back.

Anyway, my impression so far is that it is very authoritatively written. Devine is using lots of in-line statistics and figures to back up what he is explaining as he goes. For example, child survival percentages or rates in different time spans as he explains there was a bit of a population boom at one point, rather than just saying there was a population boom; economic figures, stuff like that too. It doesn't come across as boring though.

chrisupyonder, yes, that is the book. Thanks for posting a link.