by Arthur Herman (2001)
"Mention of Scotland and the Scots usually conjures up images of kilts, bagpipes, Scotch whisky, and golf. But as historian and author Arthur Herman demonstrates, in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries Scotland earned the respect of the rest of the world for its crucial contributions to science, philosophy, literature, education, medicine, commerce, and politics - contributions that have formed and nurtured the modern West ever since.". "Here is the untold story of how John Knox and the Church of Scotland laid the foundation for our modern idea of democracy; how the Scottish Enlightenment helped to inspire both the American Revolution and the U.S. Constitution; and how thousands of Scottish immigrants left their homes to create the American frontier, the Australian outback, and the British Empire in India and Hong Kong.". "How the Scots Invented the Modern World reveals how Scottish genius for creating the basic ideas and institutions of modern life stamped the lives of a series of remarkable historical figures, from James Watt and Adam Smith to Andrew Carnegie and Arthur Conan Doyle, and how Scottish heroes continue to inspire our contemporary culture, from William "Braveheart" Wallace to James Bond."--BOOK JACKET.
Timothy L. Parrish
"Who or what is an American? Many scholars have recently argued that in a country of such vast cultural and ethnic diversity as the United States it is not useful or even possible to talk of a single national identity. Are people right to suggest that the very idea of "Americanness" is merely a myth designed to obscure the divisions among us?" "This is the central question addressed by Tim Parrish in this interdisciplinary study."--BOOK JACKET.
John Ralston Saul
Voltaire's Bastards: The Dictatorship of Reason in the West is a sweeping and provocative exploration of nothing less than the political, economic, social, and cultural origins of Western society. With great daring and originality, John Ralston Saul dissects the contradictions, delusions, and illusions that have brought the world to the brink of confusion and crisis, and shatters the myths surrounding the icons and institutions that we have been taught to revere and cherish.
Wil Arts (ed
"The question this book addresses is whether it is possible to get an almost face-to-face intimacy with various forms of cultural tradition and modernity by using our experiences and our powers of imagination, i.e. our expectations, in a more fruitful way." "The contributors to this book try to give answers to this weighty question by taking as a guideline Erasmus's famous motto, i.e. always go to the sources."--Jacket.
Enrique Krauze
"Solo un historiador como Enrique Krauze podia vertebrar episodios tan alejados en el tiempo y en la geografia como el movimiento neozapatista y el Holocausto, la Revolucion de Terciopelo y el humanismo indigenista o el conflicto arabe-israeli ... El rigor y la brillantez analitica que caracterizan las obras de Krauze confluyen en este volumen, en el que poco a poco se perfila no solo la travesia de la humanidad a lo large do los siglos, sino tambien la andadura intelectual del autor."--Cover.