A review by statman
A History of Scotland by Neil Oliver

3.0

I'm taking a trip to Scotland later this year and got this book to learn more about the area before going there. This was a fascinating book and the Scottish history, while kind of a sad one, has a lot of interesting stories. The author starts from the very beginning with the geologic history that led to the formation of the Scottish isles and carries the history to the present day. I found myself wanting to know more and finally realized that because the book was written by a Scottish man, he makes assumptions about what you know and then builds off those base assumptions. For someone who knew nothing about Scotland I found him saying "Of course everyone knows this" and I didn't know what he was talking about. I can imagine that a book written on US History written by an American would have the same kinds of biases but I've never noticed it before because I am an American. I'm definitely going to have to find some more books to learn more.