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large red & gilt illustrated cloth (large rampant lion on cover) hardbound 4to ~ 4º (quarto). large book. dustwrapper in protective plastic book jacket cover.near fine cond. binding square & tight. covers clean.tiny rubbed spot bottom edge of front cover near spine. edges clean. contents free of all markings. dustwrapper in fine cond. not worn or torn or price clipped (corner is clipped but price is still visible~see photos). nice clean copy. no library markings, store stamps, stickers, bookplates, no names, inking , underlining, remainder markings etc ~ first american edition so stated. first printing (nap). illustrated frontis. & title pg. 344p. 32 pages of full color plates. 152 b&w illustrations, including 7 maps. (list of) Scotland s line of kings. notes on illustrations, & acknolwedgments. selected bibliography. index. world history. biography. archaeology. art history. history of scotland. vikings. alba. battle of bannockburn. auld alliance. robert de bruce. book of discipline. covenanters. edinburgh castle. elizabeth i. mary stuart. james vi. john knox. reformation. stone of scone. glencoe massacre. ~ FROM Kenneth MacAlpin, first king of Alba, the land of the Scots, to the luminaries of Scotland's Golden Age ~ Robert Burns, David Hurne, Adam Smith ~ a thousand years of Scotland's history, bold, brash and bloody, come vividly to life in this lavishly illustrated, colorful account of the growth of a nation. Told from a frankly personal point of view, this is the story not of one people but of six ~ Pier and Scot, Angle, Briton, Norseman and Norman ~ who were slowly united in one contentious kingdom, and whose descendants are now called Scots. If the author's sympathies lie anywhere, it is with those early Gaelic incomers of the sixth century who gave the country its name and its kings, the spirit of its history and the substance of its dreams. A turbulent chronicle, alive with plot and counterplot, murder, kidnapping, the machinations of regents, the fanaticism of reformers, and punctuated with the evocative names of long~remembered battle sites ~ Alnwick, Stirling Bridge, Flodden, Solway Moss, Culloden ~ Scotland's history is the story of the unremitting struggle of a resolute people against the ever~present threat of political and religious domination by her aggressive and powerful English neighbor. It is the story of a war of independence that began with the first defeat of a medieval Scots king and continued through bloodstained centuries to the last, dying echoes of dissent that only weakly proclaimed an independent Scotland in the nineteenth century. It was a struggle ultimately lost and, ironically, Scotland's brief Golden Age, the flowering of its arts and sciences, came only after the long~resisted union with England. Between the present and the heroic past stand those astonishing years ~ no more than one man's lifetime ~ when the material and spiritual promise of the Union was triumphantly realized, and the foundation of a future Scotland was laid. The significance of those years, however, can only be understood within the context of the centuries that preceded them. In the 'long brawl of Scottish history' there is much that is bloody, brutal and treacherous. But there is also much that is ennobling and inspiring. Drawn from contemporary journals, documents, letters and the traditional tales and ballads that so enrich the Scottish heritage, magnificently illustrated with photographs and paintings, John Prebble's personal view of Scotland superbly evokes the spirit of this proud and defiant lion in the north .
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