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Historical The Illustrated History of Scotland by Chis Tabraham $35.00 / Oyster Press / 2004 Adam Smith, David Hume, and James Watt all came from Scotland; so, too, did steel tycoon Andrew Carnegie, architect and painter Charles Rennie Mackintosh, and a host of others who have left their mark upon the world. This tiny nation has had a long and proud history, one which Chris Tabraham chronicles lovingly in his Illustrated History of Scotland, a lavishly illustrated tome that provides everything one needs to know about a land which has given us far more than Tartans, bagpipes, and whiskey. Tabraham starts with a geological record, in which he describes the various cataclysms which broke this rocky mass of land away from Pangea and sent it drifting to its current position in the North Sea. From there, he takes us through prehistory and ancient history, including a discussion of the great stones at Calanais, Machrie Moor, Arran, and 5,000-year-old Skara Brae, northern Europe's best-preserved Stone Age village. Colin Baxter's photos in this chapter capture the bleak, inaccessible beauty of Scotland's far north and are among the most striking in the book. Things get especially interesting with the arrival of various invaders. Romans, Angles, and Vikings, all left their mark on this land, as did the Gaelic pirates who were called Scotti. By the 12th century, these people had all joined together in a land called "Scotland." But, alas, this was "nae" the end of Scotland's troubles. England's kings soon cast covetous eyes on the lands to the north, leading to several centuries of bloody warfare as British forces faced the likes of William Wallace and Robert the Bruce. Ultimately, Scotsman King James ascended England's throne and by 1707, England and Scotland became a "United Kingdom." Tabraham does not just focus on Scotland's heroes; he pays equal attention to the crofters (tenant farmers), herring fishermen, and laborers who made Scotland an industrial colossus, as well as portraying both the city-living Lowlanders and the mountain-living Highlanders, and to the brave Scots soldiers who fought at Waterloo, the Somme, and Gallipoli. He also honors the many peasant Scots who were driven from their homes during the Highland Clearances, so that wealthy nobles could raise their sheep on the wild moors. Many coffee table books are long on pretty pictures and short on actual text, but this one has plenty of both. The Illustrated History of Scotland is educational and entertaining, both pleasing to the eye and stimulating to the mind. —Kevin Filan

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