New Paperbacks NEW PAPERBACKS [jsb_filter_by_tags count="15" show_more="10" sort_by="total_products"/] A selection of recent paperbacks. The British version re-titled the book The Scottish Enlightenment: The Scots invention of the Modern World and released in the UK market by Fourth Estate, a HarperCollins imprint. Perfecting the steam engine, introducing inoculation to fight smallpox, inventing street lamps, devising the system of time zones, and discovering the simple method to prevent scurvy were all products of the Scottish imagination. Edinburgh transformed from a sleepy regional capital to a city that rivaled London, Paris and Amsterdam in importance. People of Scottish ancestry will love this book, but so will anyone who enjoys learning about how we became who we are.

I recommend this book to anybody that is trying to learn more about Scotland, it's vast history how it's people have changed the world. The people were always more powerful than the rulers they created; they were free to remove them at will.They were Whigs (Shaftesbury’s father had even been founder of the Whig Party), not just because they were strong Protestants but because they believed, contrary to Berkeley, that men were born with a desire to be free, in their own lives and in their political arrangements.

In addition, many of the signers of the Declaration of Independence were either Scottish or descendents of Scots. At the University of Glasgow, James Watt perfected the crucial technology of the Industrial Revolution: the steam engine. The point of this book is that being Scottish is more than just a matter of nationality or place of origin or clan or even culture. What do pneumatic tires, ATMs, toasters, disposable contact lenses, and the telephone have in common? His greatest achievement, however, was his book on the nature of political authority, titled The Law of Government Among the Scots, published in 1579.

Herman tears down a few misconceptions about the Scots as he rebuilds their image as original thinkers and practical achievers. They are “guilty,” “not guilty,” and “not proven,” which jurors invoke when they decide the prosecution has failed to make a compelling case even when the prisoner is obviously guilty.

See our Remarkables Archive list for what is no longer in print, but which we are happy to track down. This is the sort of view we are used to ascribing to John Locke; in fact, it belongs to a Presbyterian Scot from Stirlingshire writing more than a hundred years earlier.All worldlie strength, yea even in things spiritual, decays, and yet shall never the work of God decay. Used books have different signs of use and might not include supplemental materials such as CDs, Dvds, Access Codes, charts or any other extra material. Herman examines the lives and work of these and many more eminent Scots, capably defending his thesis and arguing, with both skill and good cheer, that the Scots “have by and large made the world a better place rather than a worse place.

They become easy prey to demagogues and applaud every attempt to undermine the foundations of that “natural liberty” which they have enjoyed in the first place. Obviously, the Scots did not do everything by themselves: other nations—Germans, French, English, Italians, Russians, and many others—have their place in the making of the modern world. On a more immediately practical front, but no less bound to that notion of progress, Scotland also fielded inventors, warriors, administrators, and diplomats such as Alexander Graham Bell, Andrew Carnegie, Simon MacTavish, and Charles James Napier, who created empires and great fortunes, extending Scotland's reach into every corner of the world.Scotland must have been a beleaguered country after Culloden, and the fact that they emerged into such a powerhouse of knowledge and science and learning was inspirational. Adam Smith, David Hume, Lord Kames, James Watt and other crucial figures to Western history walk through these pages.