“What are the best Nonfiction & History Books About Scotland?” We looked at 339 of the top books, aggregating and ranking them so we could answer that very question!

The top 43 books, all appearing on 2 or more “Best Scottish Nonfiction” lists, are ranked below by how many times they appear. The remaining 275+ titles, as well as the lists we used, are in alphabetical order at the bottom of the page.

Happy Scrolling!

Top 43 Best Scottish Nonfiction Books

43 .) At the Loch of the Green Corrie by Andrew Greig

Lists It Appears On:

• Scottish Book Trust
• Telegraph

A homage to a remarkable poet and his world.’At The Loch of Green Corrie is more than merely elegant, more than a collection of albeit fascinating insights, laugh-out-loud observations and impressively broad erudition’ – Sunday Herald’You could easily make a case that Andrew Greig has the greatest range of any living Scottish writer’ – ScotsmanFor many years Andrew Greig saw the poet Norman MacCaig as a father figure. Months before his death, MacCaig’s enigmatic final request to Greig was that he fish for him at the Loch of the Green Corrie; the location, even the real name of his destination was more mysterious still. His search took in days of outdoor living, meetings, and fishing with friends in the remote hill lochs of far North-West Scotland. It led, finally, to the waters of the Green Corrie, which would come to reflect Greig’s own life, his thoughts on poetry, geology and land ownership in the Highlands and the ambiguous roles of whisky, love and male friendship. At the Loch of the Green Corrie is a richly atmospheric narrative, a celebration of losing and recovering oneself in a unique landscape, the consideration of a particular culture, and a homage to a remarkable poet and his world.

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42 .) Culloden by John Prebble

Lists It Appears On:

• Books In Scotland
• Goodreads 2

The last great battle on British soil.

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41 .) Edinburgh: Picturesque Notes by Robert Louis Stevenson

Lists It Appears On:

• Goodreads
• Rick Steves

Edinburgh by Robert Louis Stevenson is a classic that has been loved by many for generations, a great addition to the collection. Any profits generated from the sale of this book will go towards the Freeriver Community project, a project designed to promote harmonious community living and well-being in the world.

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40 .) Findings by Kathleen Jamie

Lists It Appears On:

• Scottish Book Trust
• Telegraph

It’s surprising what you can find by simply stepping out to look. Award-winning poet Kathleen Jamie has an eye and an ease with the nature and landscapes of Scotland as well as an incisive sense of our domestic realities. In Findings she draws together these themes to describe travels like no other contemporary writer. Whether she is following the call of a peregrine in the hills above her home in Fife, sailing into a dark winter solstice on the Orkney islands, or pacing around the carcass of a whale on a rain-swept Hebridean beach, she creates a subtle and modern narrative, peculiarly alive to her connections and surroundings.

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39 .) From Pictland to Alba: Scotland, 789-1070 by Alex Woolf

Lists It Appears On:

• Books In Scotland
• Questia

In the 780s northern Britain was dominated by two great kingdoms; Pictavia, centred in north-eastern Scotland and Northumbria which straddled the modern Anglo-Scottish border. Within a hundred years both of these kingdoms had been thrown into chaos by the onslaught of the Vikings and within two hundred years they had become distant memories. This book charts the transformation of the political landscape of northern Britain between the eighth and the eleventh centuries. Central to this narrative is the mysterious disappearance of the Picts and their language and the sudden rise to prominence of the Gaelic-speaking Scots who would replace them as the rulers of the North.

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38 .) Impaled Upon a Thistle: Scotland Since 1880 by Ewan A. Cameron

Lists It Appears On:

• Books In Scotland
• Questia

Ewen Cameron explores the political debate between unionism, liberalism, socialism and nationalism, and the changing political relationship between Scotland and the United Kingdom. He sets Scottish experience alongside the Irish, Welsh and European, and considers British dimensions of historical change–involvement in two world wars, imperial growth and decline, for example – from a Scottish perspective. He relates political events to trends and movements in the economy, culture and society of the nation’s regions–borders, lowlands, highlands, and islands. Underlying the history, and sometimes impelling its ambitions, are the evolution and growth of national self-confidence and identity which fundamentally affected Scotland’s destiny in the last century. Dr Cameron ends by considering how such forces may transform it in this one. Like the period it describes this book has politics at its heart. The recent upsurge of scholarship and publication, backed by the author’s extensive primary research, underpin its vivid and well-paced narrative.

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37 .) In Search of Scotland by Gordon Menzies

Lists It Appears On:

• Books In Scotland
• Telegraph

“History is where we come from, history is who we are. From the Stone Age to the present, this book charts the impact of Celts, Picts, Romans, Irish, Vikings, and English, of battles, wars and empire. The great and the good figure prominently, of course, but the story of Scotland is also about ordinary people, who lived and loved, worked and died, mostly leaving no record at all.

Under the leadership of Gordon Menzies, the BBC series producer, Scotland’s leading historians have combined to produce a work that is revealing and authoritative. Powerful people figure prominently in the book: St. Columba, Queen Margaret, David I, Wallace, Bruce, James III, James IV, James V, John Knox, the Covenanters, the Jacobites, the philosophers and scientists of the Enlightenment, the Victorian entrepreneurs, and the power-brokers of the twentieth century. But ordinary people are certainly vital to the story: soldiers, farmers, ship-builders, metalworkers, and many others.”

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36 .) Lost Edinburgh by Hamish Coghill

Lists It Appears On:

• Books In Scotland
• Scottish Book Trust

What happened to Edinburgh’s once notorious but picturesque Tolbooth Prison? Where was the Black Turnpike, once a dominant building in the town? Why has one of the New Town designer’s major layouts been all but obliterated? What else has been lost in Edinburgh? From Edinburgh’s mean beginnings—’wretched accommodation, no comfortable houses, no soft beds’, visiting French knights complained in 1341—it went on to attract some of the world’s greatest architects to design and build and shape a unique city. But over the centuries many of those fine buildings have gone. Some were destroyed by invasion and civil strife, some simply collapsed with old age and neglect, and others were swept away in the ‘improvements’ of the nineteenth century. Yet more fell to the developers’ swathe of destruction in the twentieth century. Much of the medieval architecture vanished in the Old Town, Georgian Squares were attacked, Princes Street ruined, old tenements razed in huge slum clearance drives, and once familiar and much loved buildings vanished. The changing pattern of industry, social habits, health service, housing and road systems all took their toll; not even the city wall was immune.

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35 .) Mary Queen of Scots by Antonia Fraser

Lists It Appears On:

• Goodreads
• Goodreads 2

“She was the quintessential queen: statuesque, regal, dazzlingly beautiful. Her royal birth gave her claim to the thrones of two nations; her marriage to the young French dauphin promised to place a third glorious crown on her noble head.

Instead, Mary Stuart became the victim of her own impulsive heart, scandalizing her world with a foolish passion that would lead to abduction, rape and even murder. Betrayed by those she most trusted, she would be lured into a deadly game of power, only to lose to her envious and unforgiving cousin, Elizabeth I.

Here is her story, a queen who lost a throne for love, a monarch pampered and adored even as she was led to her beheading, the unforgettable woman who became a legend for all time.”

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34 .) Medieval Scotland by Alan MacQuarrie

Lists It Appears On:

• Books In Scotland
• Questia

The history of medieval Scotland

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33 .) Montrose by John Buchan

Lists It Appears On:

• Books In Scotland
• Pining For The West

John Buchan describes Graham, Marquis of Montrose’s command of the royalist forces during the 1644 to 1650 war with the Covenanters. Montrose’s exceptional strength, leadership and military genius are brought to life. Buchan also illustrates an important period in Scottish history, adding his own measure of adventure to this study.

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32 .) No Gods and Precious Few Heroes by Christopher Harvie

Lists It Appears On:

• Books In Scotland
• Goodreads 2

Epitomised by political, social and technological change this history appraises a fast-evolving century, from the outbreak of World War I up to the present and the politics of devolution and the age of the internet. The book begins with the devastating impact of World War I and Scotland’s critical role in its conduct, then continues to explore Scots institutional life, from 1922 to 1964, governed by the problems of economy, society, politics and culture embedded in a mature industrialised state with economic problems and governmental deficits. Two further chapters cover the period from 1964 to 1999, including the challenge of new industries, oil discoveries, and the rise of devolutionary and nationalist politics. A new section for this edition covers the course of devolved politics, from the Scottish parliament of 1999 to the financial collapse of 2008 and the constitutional upheavals of 2014-15, rounding off this unique interpretation of a century of Scottish life from a cherished and multi-faceted historian.

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31 .) Queen of Scots: The True Life of Mary Stuart by John Guy

Lists It Appears On:

• Goodreads
• Goodreads 2

“In the first full-scale biography of Mary Stuart in more than thirty years, John Guy creates an intimate and absorbing portrait of one of history’s greatest women, depicting her world and her place in the sweep of history with stunning immediacy. Bringing together all surviving documents and uncovering a trove of new sources for the first time, Guy dispels the popular image of Mary Queen of Scots as a romantic leading lady — achieving her ends through feminine wiles — and establishes her as the intellectual and political equal of Elizabeth I.

Through Guy’s pioneering research and superbly readable prose, we come to see Mary as a skillful diplomat, maneuvering ingeniously among a dizzying array of factions that sought to control or dethrone her. Queen of Scots is an enthralling, myth-shattering look at a complex woman and ruler and her time.”

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30 .) Rebus’s Scotland: a Personal Journey by Ian Rankin

Lists It Appears On:

• Goodreads
• Telegraph

Ian Rankin’s guide to the places in Scotland that have provided inspiration for his bestselling Inspector Rebus novels.’His novels are playing a significant part in redefining Scotland’s image of itself in literature’ INDEPENDENT ON SUNDAYIn REBUS’S SCOTLAND Ian Rankin uncovers the Scotland that the tourist never sees, highlighting the places that inspired the settings for the Inspector Rebus novels. Rankin also reveals the story of Rebus and how he came into being, who he is, and what his – and Rankin’s – Scotland is like. With over 100 evocative photographs, specially commissioned to reflect the text, REBUS’S SCOTLAND is the perfect gift for anyone interested in Scotland or in the novels of Ian Rankin.

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29 .) Robert the Bruce: King of Scots by Ronald McNair Scott

Lists It Appears On:

• Goodreads
• Goodreads 2

Robert the Bruce is one of the great heroic figures of history. When after years of struggle Scotland was reduced to a vassal state by Edward I of England it was Bruce who, supported by the Scottish Church and a group of devoted followers, had himself crowned at Scone as King of Scots and renewed the fight for freedom. Ronald McNair Scott has used the accounts of contemporary chronicles, particularly those of John Barbour, to reconstruct the story of one of the most remarkable of medieval kings. It is a story with episodes quite as romantic as those of King Arthur, but one which belongs to the authentic history of the Scottish nation.

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28 .) Scotland Re-Formed, 1488-1587 by Jane E. A. Dawson

Lists It Appears On:

• Books In Scotland
• Questia

From the death of James III to the execution of Mary, Queen of Scots, Jane Dawson tells story of Scotland from the perspective of its regions and of individual Scots, as well as incorporating the view from the royal court. Scotland Re-formed shows how the country was re-formed as the relationship between church and crown changed, with these two institutions converging, merging and diverging, thereby permanently altering the nature of Scottish governance. Society was also transformed, especially by the feuars, new landholders who became the backbone of rural Scotland. The Reformation Crisis of 1559-60 brought the establishment of a Protestant Kirk, an institution influencing the lives of Scots for many centuries, and a diplomatic revolution that discarded the ‘auld alliance’ and locked Scotland’s future into the British Isles.Although the disappearance of the pre-Reformation church left a patronage deficit with disastrous effects for Scottish music and art, new forms of cultural expression arose that

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27 .) Scotland: A History by Jenny Wormald

Lists It Appears On:

• Books In Scotland
• Questia

“Scottish history has long been dominated by the romantic tales of Robert the Bruce, William Wallace, Mary Queen of Scots, and Bonnie Prince Charlie. But the explosion of serious historical research in the last half-century has fueled a keen desire for a better-informed and more satisfying understanding of the Scottish past.
This attractively designed book–boasting scores of illustrations, include eight color plates–brings together the leading authorities on Scottish history, who range from Roman times until the present day, offering a more accurate and sophisticated portrait of Scotland through the ages. The contributors take us from medieval Scotland, to the crisis created by Mary Queen of Scots and the trauma of Reformation, to the reign of James VI and the Union of the Crowns (1603). They discuss the seventeenth century, when a stern Calvinist Kirk launched an unprecedented attack on music, dancing, drama, and drinking, and the remarkable transformation of enlightenment Scotland, when the small nation became a great force in European literature, with such eminent figures as David Hume, Adam Smith, Robert Burns, and James Boswell. We discover that in the nineteenth century the Scottish economy, by some criteria, outpaced the rest of Britain, and its preeminence in heavy engineering was unquestioned. And we follow Scotland through the turbulent twentieth century, enduring two world wars and a depression, before ending on a high note, with Scotland enjoying its first parliament in three hundred years. “

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26 .) Scotland: The Story of a Nation by Magnus Magnusson

Lists It Appears On:

• Books In Scotland
• Goodreads 2

Magnusson draws on a great deal of modern scholarship to redefine a nation’s history. He charts the long struggle toward nationhood, explores the roots of the original Scots, and examines the extent to which Scotland was shaped by the Romans, the Picts, the Vikings, and the English. Encompassing everything from the first Mesolithic settlers in 7000 B.C. to the present movements for independence, Scotland: The Story of a Nation is history on an epic level, essential reading for anyone interested in the rich past of this captivating land.

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25 .) Scotland: A New History by Michael Lynch

Lists It Appears On:

• Books In Scotland
• Goodreads 2

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24 .) Scottish Queens 1034-1714 by Rosalind K. Marshall

Lists It Appears On:

• Books In Scotland
• Goodreads 2

The lives of the Scottish queens, both those who ruled in their own right, and also the consorts, have largely been obscured and neglected. Rosalind K. Marshall addresses this oversight with a collection of mini-biographies, illuminating the fascinating lives of these unusual women, who all found themselves at the helm of a kingdom, and reacted in very different ways. One of the earliest known Scottish queens was none other than the notorious Lady MacBeth. Was she really the wicked woman depicted in Shakespeare’s famous play? Was St Margaret a demure and obedient wife? Why did Margaret Logie exercise such an influence over her husband, David II, and have we underestimated James VI’s consort, Anne of Denmark, frequently written off as a stupid and wilful woman? These are just a few of the questions addressed by Dr Marshall in her entertaining, scholarly study.

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23 .) Tales and Traditions of Scottish Castles by Nigel Tranter

Lists It Appears On:

• Books In Scotland
• The Scottish Castles Association

Nigel Tranter’s gift for bringing Scottish history to life is demonstrated in this lively book which details 45 of the nation’s castles with associated tales and traditions. With a broad geographical spread, Tranter breathes life into many of Scotland’s gaunt and shadowy ruins with a lively mix of anecdote, fact, myth and legend. An essential holiday companion when visiting Scotland.

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22 .) The Castles of Scotland by Martin Coventry

Lists It Appears On:

• Books In Scotland
• The Scottish Castles Association

This acclaimed and popular book is the definitive and most comprehensive work available, on the castles, towers, and fortified houses of Scotland. Arranged alphabetically, each entry has the location and postcode, architecture and development, both inside and out, depictions on old maps, family and notable owners, history and sieges, ghosts and gruesome or amusing tales. Plus opening, websites, and telephone numbers. Twelve pages of maps locate all the castles. This edition is the culmination of twenty-four years of research, compiling, editing, and updating.

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21 .) The Drove Roads of Scotland by A R B Haldane

Lists It Appears On:

• Books In Scotland
• Wilderness Scotland

One of the great classics of Scottish history, The Drove Roads of Scotland interweaves folklore, social comment and economic history in a fascinating account of Scotland’s droving trade and the routes by which cattle and sheep were brought from every corner of the land to markets in central Scotland. In pastoral Scotland, the breeding and movement of livestock were fundamental to the lives of the people. The story of the drove roads takes the reader on an engrossing tour of Scottish history, from the lawless cattle driving by reivers in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries to the legitimate movement of stock which developed after the Union of the Crowns, by which time the large-scale movement of stock to established markets had become an important part of Scotland’s economy, and a vital aspect of commercial life in the Empire. Haldane’s work is one of the great classics of Scottish history.

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20 .) The Emperor’s New Kilt by Jan-Andrew Henderson

Lists It Appears On:

• Books In Scotland
• Rick Steves

Did you know that a Scot landed in America a century before Columbus? Or that Scotland had electric lighting 70 years before Edison patented the light bulb? Probably not, because Scotland has two histories. The image of the Scots as whisky-drinking, tartan-sporting, tight-fisted kilt wearers is famous throughout the world. The image is manufactured. Yet Scotland’s reputation for producing inventors, thinkers, and explorers—people who have changed the course of world history—is nowhere near as prevalent. The scale of Scottish influence has truly been underestimated. This book looks at the things Scots are famous for—and shouldn’t be, and the things they aren’t famous for—and should be.

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19 .) The Highland Clearances by John Prebble

Lists It Appears On:

• Books In Scotland
• Goodreads 2

In the terrible aftermath of the moorland battle of Culloden, the Highlanders suffered at the hands of their own clan chiefs. Following his magnificent reconstruction of Culloden, John Prebble recounts how the Highlanders were deserted and then betrayed into famine and poverty. While their chiefs grew rich on meat and wool, the people died of cholera and starvation or, evicted from the glens to make way for sheep, were forced to emigrate to foreign lands. ‘Mr Prebble tells a terrible story excellently.

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18 .) The Oxford Companion to Scottish History by Michael Lynch

Lists It Appears On:

• Books In Scotland
• Goodreads 2

Compiled by more than 170 eminent contributors, it covers over 2000 years and extends from Galloway to Orkney and Shetland and from the Borders to the Western Isles. At more than half a million words and nearly 800 pages, this wide-ranging resource provides comprehensive coverage of Scotland’s eventful history–interpreting that history broadly enough to include archaeology, architecture, culture, folk belief, climate, geology, and languages. Readers will find entries on figures such as Columba, Macbeth, and William Wallace sitting alongside entries on sport and culture–on Burns Clubs, curling, and shinty–and on major historical issues such as clans, Clearances, and Covenanters. In addition to concise factual entries, longer articles explore key themes such as kingship, national identity, migration, women, urban and rural life, the economy, housing, living standards, and religious beliefs across the centuries. Maps, genealogies, a chronology, a substantial guide to further reading, a thematic contents list, and an index add further to the value of this excellent resource.

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17 .) The Royal Stuarts: A History of the Family That Shaped Britain by Allan Massie

Lists It Appears On:

• Books In Scotland
• Goodreads 2

In this fascinating and intimate portrait of the Stuarts, author Allan Massie takes us deep into one of history’s bloodiest and most tumultuous reigns. Exploring the family’s lineage from the first Stuart king to the last, The Royal Stuarts is a panoramic history of the family that acted as a major player in the Scottish Wars of Independence, the Union of the Crowns, the English Civil War, the Restoration, and more.

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16 .) The Scots: A Genetic Journey by Alistair Moffat

Lists It Appears On:

• Books In Scotland
• Goodreads 2

History has always mattered to Scots, and rarely more so than now at the outset of a new century, after more than ten years of a new parliament and the new census of 2011. An almost limitless archive of our history lies hidden inside our bodies and we carry the ancient story of Scotland around with us. The mushrooming of genetic studies, of DNA analysis, is rewriting our history in spectacular fashion. In this new edition of The Scots: A Genetic Journey, Alistair Moffat explores the history that is printed on our genes, and in a remarkable new approach, uncovers the detail of where we are from, who we are and, in so doing, vividly paints a DNA map of Scotland.

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15 .) The Scottish Nation: A History, 1700-2000 by T M Devine

Lists It Appears On:

• Books In Scotland
• Goodreads 2

Overturning many assumptions about Scotland’s history, this book takes both traditional topics and new themes, making them fascinating and accessible for those wanting to understand the recent development of this historic nation, as the first Scottish Parliament since 1707 prepares to meet in the summer of 2000.

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14 .) The Sea Kingdoms: The History of Celtic Britain Ireland by Alistair Moffat

Lists It Appears On:

• Books In Scotland
• Goodreads

Alistair Moffat’s journey, from the Scottish islands and Scotland, to the English coast, Wales, Cornwall and Ireland, ignores national boundaries to reveal the rich fabric of culture and history of Celtic Britain which still survives today. This is a vividly told, dramatic and enlightening account of the oral history, legends and battles of a people whose past stretches back many hundred of years. The Sea Kingdoms is a story of great tragedies, ancient myths and spectacular beauty.

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13 .) The Steel Bonnets: The Story of the Anglo-Scottish Border Reivers by George MacDonald Fraser

Lists It Appears On:

• Books In Scotland
• Goodreads 2

In The Steel Bonnets, George MacDonald Fraser, author of the bestselling Flashman novels and himself a borderer, takes us back through three centuries of conflict, telling the fascinating and bloody story of the reivers. He relates their rise to power as ferocious soldiers on horseback, their important roles in the battles at Flodden and Solway Moss, and their surprisingly sudden fall from grace. The Steel Bonnets is a superb work of serious history and scholarship that is as irresistibly compelling as any novel.

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12 .) The Wars of Scotland, 1214-1371 by Michael Brown

Lists It Appears On:

• Books In Scotland
• Goodreads 2

The Wars of Scotland is the story of the pivotal period in Scottish history between 1214 and 1371. The century and a half between the death of King William the Lion and the accession of the Stewarts witnessed major changes in the internal character of the kingdom and its place in the wider European world. The opening decades of this era seemed to be dominated by the continued development of a defined Scottish realm but the crisis which engulfed the kings and their people meant that issues of war and allegiance would make fourteenth-century Scotland a very different place. This book is the first detailed discussion of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries as a single period of both developing and fragmenting political hierarchies and communities. The Wars of Scotland provides a political narrative which places events in their immediate context as well as highlighting special issues and groups in thematic chapters. It also introduces a new discussion of the stability and unity of Scotland as a realm

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11 .) William Wallace by Andrew Fisher

Lists It Appears On:

• Books In Scotland
• Goodreads 2

By no means prepared by birth, education or training for leadership, Wallace nevertheless rose to prominence during the Wars of Independence, leading forces which broke the sequence of English victories and re-energising and inspiring his countrymen in the process. While others, ostensibly his betters, yielded and collaborated, Wallace set an example of constancy and perseverance and became the Guardian of Scotland. Even his terrible death in London in 1305 can be seen as a victory as it provided inspiration for the continuance of the struggle against English domination. Despite Wallace’s almost mythical status—boosted in no small part by the film Braveheart—present-day perceptions of him are not always based on the objective analysis of the historical facts. In this revised and expanded biography, Andrew Fisher investigates all the aspects of Wallace’s life and character, treating him as a man of his time. The result is a more authentic picture of the greatest of Scotland’s heroes than has been previously available.

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10 .) William Wallace: Brave Heart by James MacKay

Lists It Appears On:

• Books In Scotland
• Goodreads 2

Sir William Wallace of Ellerslie is one of history’s greatest heroes, but also one of its greatest enigmas—a shadowy figure whose edges have been blurred by myth and legend. James MacKay uses all his skills as a historical detective to produce this definitive biography, telling the incredible story of a man who, without wealth or noble birth, rose to become Guardian of Scotland. William Wallace, with superb generalship and tactical genius, led a country with no previous warlike tradition to triumph gloriously over the much larger, better-armed, and better-trained English forces. 700 years later, the heroism and betrayal, the valiant deeds and the dark atrocities, and the struggle of a small nation against a brutal and powerful empire, still create a compelling tale.

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9 .) A History Of Scotland by Neil Oliver

Lists It Appears On:

• Books In Scotland
• Goodreads 2
• Historic Environment Scotland

Scotland’s history gets a rewrite by archaeologist and historian Neil Oliver. How accurate are the accounts of Mary Queen of Scots’s tragic demise or Bonnie Prince Charlie’s forlorn cause? Oliver reveals a Scotland that forged its own identity with success, despite its union with England in 1707.

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8 .) Before Scotland: The Story of Scotland Before History by Alistair Moffat

Lists It Appears On:

• Books In Scotland
• Goodreads
• Goodreads 2

This story of early Scotland begins 10,000 years ago at the end of the Ice Age when the familiar Scottish geography of mountains, glens, and rugged coasts evolved. It follows the movement of hunter-gatherers north, the growth of fishing, the establishment of farming.

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7 .) From Caledonia to Pictland: Scotland to 795 by James E Fraser

Lists It Appears On:

• Books In Scotland
• Goodreads 2
• Questia

Shortlisted for the 2009 Saltire Society History Book of the YearFrom Caledonia to Pictland examines the transformation of Iron Age northern Britain into a land of Christian kingdoms, long before ‘Scotland’ came into existence. Perched at the edge of the western Roman Empire, northern Britain was not unaffected by the experience, and became swept up in the great tide of processes which gave rise to the early medieval West. Like other places, the country experienced social and ethnic metamorphoses, Christianisation, and colonization by dislocated outsiders, but northern Britain also has its own unique story to tell in the first eight centuries AD.This book is the first detailed political history to treat these centuries as a single period, with due regard for Scotland’s position in the bigger story of late Antique transition. From Caledonia to Pictland charts the complex and shadowy processes which saw the familiar Picts, Northumbrians, North Britons and Gaels of early Scottish history become established in the country, the achievements of their foremost political figures, and their ongoing links with the world around them. It is a story that has become much revised through changing trends in scholarly approaches to the challenging evidence, and that transformation too is explained for the benefit of students and general readers.

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6 .) Glencoe: The Story of the Massacre by John Prebble

Lists It Appears On:

• Books In Scotland
• Goodreads
• Goodreads 2

You are hereby ordered to fall upon the rebels, the MacDonalds of Glencoe, and to put all to the sword under seventy.’ This was the treacherous and cold-blooded order ruthlessly carried out on 13 February 1692, when the Campbells slaughtered their hosts the MacDonalds at the Massacre of Glencoe. It was a bloody incident which had deep repercussions and was the beginning of the destruction of the Highlanders. John Prebble’s masterly description of the terrible events at Glencoe was praised as ‘Evocative and powerful’ in the Sunday Telegraph.

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5 .) How the Scots Invented the Modern World: The True Story of How Western Europe’s Poorest Nation Created Our World and Everything in It by Arthur Herman

Lists It Appears On:

• Rick Steves
• Goodreads
• Goodreads 2

“Who formed the first literate society? Who invented our modern ideas of democracy and free market capitalism? The Scots. As historian and author Arthur Herman reveals, in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries Scotland made crucial contributions to science, philosophy, literature, education, medicine, commerce, and politics—contributions that have formed and nurtured the modern West ever since.

Herman has charted a fascinating journey across the centuries of Scottish history. 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.”

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4 .) Scotland: Mapping the Nation by Christopher Fleet, Margaret Wilkes, Charles W J Withers

Lists It Appears On:

• Books From Scotland
• Books In Scotland
• Scottish Book Trust

From the earliest depictions of Scotland by Ptolemy in the second century AD to the most recent mapping and representation in the geographic information system and in satellite navigation, this collection offers a fascinating and thought-provoking perspective on Scottish history and geography. Written by experts who have spent their lives working with maps and map history, this new history of Scotland is beautifully illustrated with details of the most significant manuscripts and printed maps of the country.

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3 .) Sea Room: An Island Life in the Hebrides by Adam Nicolson

Lists It Appears On:

• Rick Steves
• Goodreads
• Scottish Book Trust

“In 1937, Adam Nicolson’s father answered a newspaper ad for a small cluster of three islands-The Shiants (Gaelic meaning “”holy”” or “”enchanted””)-which lie east of the Outer Hebrides of Scotland. Sheer black cliffs drop five hundred feet into the cold, dark, rip currents of the Minch, lounging seals crowd at their feet and thousands upon thousands of sea birds swarm overhead in the sky. Nicolson inherited the islands when he was twenty-one and in this spellbinding and luminous book, he recalls his keenly deep connection to the wild, windswept, and yet enchantingly beautiful property. Not merely a haven of solitude, the islands, with a centuries-old past haunted by restless ghosts and tales of ancient treasure, came to be for Nicolson his heartland and a “”sea room””-a sailing term he uses to mean “”the sense of enlargement that island life can give you.””
In passionate, prismatic prose, Sea Room celebrates this extraordinary landscape, exploring Nicolson’s complicated relationship to the paradoxes of island life and the wonder of revelatory engagement with our natural world.”

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2 .) The Hidden Ways: Scotland’s Forgotten Roads by Alistair Moffat

Lists It Appears On:

• Books From Scotland
• Books From Scotland
• Scottish Book Trust

“In The Hidden Ways, Alistair Moffat traverses the lost paths of Scotland. Down Roman roads tramped by armies, warpaths and pilgrim routes, drove roads and rail roads, turnpikes and sea roads, he traces the arteries through which our nation’s lifeblood has flowed in a bid to understand how our history has left its mark upon our landscape.

Moffat’s travels along the hidden ways reveal not only the searing beauty and magic of the Scottish landscape, but open up a different sort of history, a new way of understanding our past by walking in the footsteps of our ancestors. In retracing the forgotten paths, he charts a powerful, surprising and moving history of Scotland through the unremembered lives who have moved through it.”

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1 .) Scotland: The Autobiography 2,000 Years of Scottish History By Those Who Saw It Happen by Rosemary Goring

Lists It Appears On:

• Books In Scotland
• Goodreads
• Goodreads 2
• Rick Steves

This is a vivid, wide-ranging and engrossing account of Scotland’s history, composed of eye-witness accounts by those who experienced it first-hand. Contributors range from Tacitus, Mary Queen of Scots and Oliver Cromwell to Adam Smith, David Livingstone and Billy Connolly. These include not just key historic moments – from Bannockburn to the opening of the new parliament in 1999, but testimonies like that of the eight-year-old factory worker who was dangled by his ear out of a third-floor window for making a mistake; the survivors of Culloden, who wished perhaps that they had died on the field; the breakthrough moment for John Logie Baird, inventor of television; and, the genesis of great works of literature recorded by Conan Doyle, Stevenson and the editor of “Encyclopaedia Britannica”.From the battlefield to the sports field, we have moments of glory or disaster, along with wonderfully readable insights into the everyday life of Scotland through the millennia. This is living, accessible history told by crofters, criminals, servants, house-wives, poets, journalists, nurses, politicians, prisoners, comedians, sportsmen and many more.

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14 Best History & Nonfiction Books Book Sources/Lists