I said it was an eternal mystery; one of the problems with this book is that the Scottish Enlightenment remains a bit of a mystery even after finishing it. Herman never quite escapes the sense of merely delivering a laundry-list of great names and inventions, most of which could be more or less grasped by consulting Wikipedia's article on Scottish inventions and discoveries. TV was invented by John Logie Baird in 1925, although had he foreseen Celebrity Big Brother then he might have invented something else instead.

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

Leicester, Graham (April 15, 2002). "Scotland can still help shape new world". The Scotsman. Edinburgh. p.17. Not content with inventing the telephone, Scotland also discovered electromagnetism which is the basis for mobile phones and wi-fi. 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.”a b Golf, Sarah F.; Mark Rotella; Lynn Andriani; Jeff Zaleski (September 24, 2001). "How the Scots invented the Modern World". Publishers Weekly. 248 (39): 77.

How the Scots Invented the Modern World - Apple Books

Here was a vision of politics unlike any other at the time. George Buchanan turned it into a full-fledged doctrine of popular sovereignty, the first in Europe. Buchanan came from Stirlingshire in central Scotland, at a time when it was still much like the Highlands in its culture and character — in fact, Buchanan grew up speaking both Gaelic and Scots. He studied at the University of St. Andrews and then at the University of Paris alongside other future giants of the Reformation such as John Calvin and Ignatius Loyola, the later founder of the Jesuits. As a Greek and Latin scholar, Buchanan had few peers. But he was also a founding father of Scottish Presbyterianism: he served as Moderator of the Kirk's General Assembly — the only layman ever to do so — and helped write the Kirk's First Book of Discipline. His greatest achievement, however, was his book on the nature of political authority, titled The Law of Government Among the Scots, published in 1579. Radar was developed by Robert Watson-Watt and helped turn the tide against the Nazis in the Battle of Britain – a pivotal moment in modern history.Herman advocates embracing the U.S. history in its entirety, including the American Civil War, rather than sanitizing it after the fact: "America is a country where the process of conflict and reconciliation, combined with the passage of time, brings out and embeds the qualities that make the United States one people and one community." [11] Works [ edit ] External video He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions. Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil. This book covers about 5 centuries of Scottish history. I was most interested in the description of education in Scotland. I was unaware that Scotland provided universal education for children long before Britain did. I would argue that this is what led to the flourishing of creativity and invention. I would critique the author is this respect as readers could be left with the idea the Scots are superior as a "race" or ethnic group, rather than considering the factors that enabled people of this nation to achieve their potential. At the same time, as critically important as the availability of education, including universities to virtually everyone, there seem to be some cultural values, such as perseverance and a strong work ethic, that came together to allow this flourishing of genius.