The Scottish 100: Portraits of History's Most Influential Scots Book

This compendium of one hundred biographies celebrates seven centuries of Scots whose lives changed their world and ours. Rupert Murdoch, Rachel Carson, Immanuel Kant, Edgar Allan Poe, Elizabeth Arden - however disparate their sympathies, however diverse their times or endeavors, from media conglomerates to conservation to philosophy, literature, and business, they do have one thing in common. They all share a Scots ancestry. So do the explorers Captain Cook and David Livingstone, the painters Jackson Pollock and Mary Cassatt, the poets Robert Burns and Lord Byron, the inventors Alexander Graham Bell and Guglielmo Marconi, the statesmen Andrew Jackson and Alexander Hamilton. From the battle-scarred life of the brave-hearted Robert the Bruce, who made of Scotland a nation, defined its Gaelic heritage, and declared its independence from England in the early years of the fourteenth century to the military exploits of John Paul Jones in the American Revolution, Ulysses S. Grant in the Civil War, and General Douglas MacArthur in World War II and Korea, this volume travels across centuries and around the world to comprise the one hundred most influential Scots in history. As colorful as they are various, the portraits include kings and queens, presidents and patriots, philanthropists and philosophers, architects and artists, engineers and athletes. With names like Andrew Carnegie, John Knox, John Marshall, Edvard Grieg, Martha Graham, Thomas Edison, and James Watt, their achievements have built empires, reformed religion, defined justice, made music, revolutionized dance, made pictures move and engines run by steam. Besides Scottish-Americans, genealogists, ethnic historians, and history buffs, here is a book for anyone interested in events and inventions and visions that have significantly altered the way we live our lives.Read More