Book Report

There seems to be an outpouring of good non-fiction titles around Scottish politics, culture and identity. I don’t know if this is just an illusion that I’m experiencing, coincidence, the time of year, or an offshoot of the process we’re in the middle of? Not to forget that Kick-Ass  3 #5 is out on Wednesday too.

Here’s a selection of launches and blurbs – take your pic…

cover_1After Independence: The State of the Scottish Nation Debate edited by Gerry Hassan and James Mitchell with contributions by: James Aitken, Arthur Aughey, Anthony Barnett, Christine Bell, Graeme Blackett, Stephen Boyd, Noreen Burrows, Danny Dorling, Sara Dybrid McQuaid, Niamh Hardiman, Marc Lambert, John Kay, George Kerevan.

After Independence offers an in-depth and varied exploration of the possibilities for Scotland, from both pro and anti-independence standpoints. Drawing together over two dozen leading minds on the subject, After Independence offers a comprehensive and balanced analysis of Scotland’s current and prospective political, economic, social and cultural situation.

Available as an E book here.

Scotland the Brave? Independence and Radical Social Change, by Gregor Gall

Launch at Word Power Books Wednesday 27 November 2013 at 6.30pm

The Democratic Intellect: Scotland and Her Universities in the Nineteenth Century by George Davie

The Democratic Intellect has a claim to be the most significant single volume written by a Scottish academic in the last fifty years. It sets out to defend not only the intellectual culture of Scotland but the whole notion of what an intellectual culture can be, by showing that all its parts should benefit from all its other parts. As human beings we require both poetry and mathematics. They are not in competition.

Jim Kelman called it: “A truly seminal work in the Scottish intellectual tradition”

RICHARD GUNN and MURDO MACDONALD launch the new edition of this classic at Word Power books Wednesday 11 December 2013 at 6.00pm

“In 1990, along with Noam Chomsky, George Davie made a notable contribution to the Free University of Glasgow’s Self Determination and Power conference, which James Kelman had helped to organise at the Pearce Institute in Govan. Introducing Davie’s essay collection published later that year, Kelman wrote ‘as well as offering an introduction to the intellectual struggles in Scotland in the 18th and 19th centuries, these essays by Davie offer an insight into some of the more crucial issues in modern times’.”
– Murdo Macdonald, from the introduction to the new edition of George Davie’s The Democratic Intellect, Edinburgh University Press, 2013.

41-dHCFUNvL._BO2,204,203,200_PIsitb-sticker-arrow-click,TopRight,35,-76_SX385_SY500_CR,0,0,385,500_SH20_OU02_View from Zollernblick is the second collection of essays based on the European Regionalism symposia at Freudenstadt in Baden-Württ temberg, organised since 1991 by Christopher Harvie and Eberhard Bort. Networking Europe: Essays on Regionalism and Social Democracy was published by Liverpool University Press in 2000.

View from Zollernblick Regional Perspectives in Europe. List of Contributors: Eberhard Bort, Peter McCarey, Wolfgang Mössinger, Alison Harvie, David Walker, Tom Hubbard, Paul Gillespie, Klaus Stolz, Lesley Riddoch, Robin McAlpine, James Mitchell, Christopher Harvie, Tom Gallagher, John Osmond, Ian S Wood, Thomas Leuerer, Eberhard Bort, Peter Conradi and Helmut Doka, Henry Cowper, Terry Brotherstone, Patricia Conlan, Paul Salveson, Douglas McLeod, Noel Spare, Irene Quaile-Kersken, Frank Conlan, Stefan Büttner, Sarah Boyack, Richard Demarco, Owen Dudley Edwards, Tessa Ransford, Mario Relich, Allan Massie, Neal Ascherson and Keith Armstrong.

Again, an array of regional perspectives on constitutional politics, policy areas and cultural connections reflect the lively and diverse conversations so characteristic for these unique annual meetings of minds in the Black Forest, with contributions by academics, journalists academics, journalists, writers and politicians from Scotland, Wales, England, Ireland, Germany and other European regions.

9780956741219The Ghost of James Connolly by Allan Armstrong. James Connolly’s role in Irish history is well known and celebrated.  However, Connolly also played a prominent part in the ‘New Union’, independent Labour and Socialist movements in Edinburgh.

Allan Armstrong has written the first book looking at Connolly’s years in Edinburgh – book launch at Word Power on Friday 29 November 2013 at 7.00pm

Allan contributes to the Emancipation and Liberation blog here.

… and last but very much not least …and launching tonight at the Scottish Academy of Art and Architecture

Rethinking Highland Art: The Visual Significance of Gaelic Culture/Sealladh as ùr air Ealain na Gàidhealtachd: Brìgh Lèirsinn ann an Dualchas nan Gàidheal. Royal Scottish Academy, 2013.

Work by Gaelic speaking artists and artists responding to the culture of the Gàidhealtachd is an important part of the art of Scotland, but it is rarely recognised as such. This book aims to reverse that position.

It has its origin in a research collaboration between the Visual Research Centre, Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design (University of Dundee) and Sabhal Mòr Ostaig (University of the Highlands and Islands) which led to a major exhibition Uinneag Dhan Àird an Air: Ath-Lorg Ealain na Gàidhealtachd / Window to the West: The Rediscovery of Highland Art, held at the City Art Centre in Edinburgh in the winter months of 2010/2011.

rethinking

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  1. Tremendous bunch of titles. I read John Herdman’s new book ANOTHER COUNTRY quite recently, and although it is a memoir, it puts 2014 in perspective and genuinely shows that the vote is going to be the summation of at least 70 years work. The stuff about the 1320 Club is particularly interesting, as are the observations on the MI5 spying on the nationalists of the 70s and 80s . . . something that Herdman is sure is still occurring.

  2. I’d try Freedom and Faith, a question of Scottish Identity. St Andrew’s Press. After Independence there may well be a Spiritual revival which is easy to write off but here are reasons for one in faith to vote Yes

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