Stone Voices: The Search for Scotland

Stone Voices: The Search for Scotland
by Neal Ascherson

Stone Voices: The Search for Scotland
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Book Summary Information

Author: Neal Ascherson
Edition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2004-05-12
ISBN: 0809088452
Number of pages: 336
Publisher: Hill and Wang
Product features:
  • ISBN13: 9780809088454
  • Condition: New
  • Notes: BRAND NEW FROM PUBLISHER! 100% Satisfaction Guarantee. Tracking provided on most orders. Buy with Confidence! Millions of books sold!

Book Reviews of Stone Voices: The Search for Scotland

Book Review: Brilliant and entertaining
Summary: 5 Stars

I thought this book had it all. A wonderful introduction to contemporary Scotland (as of 2002) that also has fascinating looks at nearly all the significant (and some forgotten) bits of Scottish history. The author is very erudite, it's true, for instance drawing interesting parallels with other parts of Europe. (He compares the bus tour he was on for the Yes campaign for a Scottish Parliament with the bus tour Gunter Grass organized for the SPD/Willy Brandt's 1965 election campaign, thereby giving the reader a bonus glimpse into German history.) I didn't find this book dry at all, I thought it was hugely entertaining. I don't think you need be all that knowledgeable about British politics to understand the points he is making. The author gives adequate background about everything and is not making assumptions about the readers' prior knowledge. (On the other hand, I remember a book by Ascherson about Eastern European politics that really was too dry for me to get through. Stone Voices isn't like that.) Very informative, thought provoking and nuanced look at a country that remains elusive, maybe even to its own inhabitants.

Summary of Stone Voices: The Search for Scotland

The rediscovery of Scotland?s past and a wake-up call about its future, from a leading scholar-journalist

Scotland has a new Parliament and it has North Sea oil, but is it yet an independent, self-sustaining democracy? Is it a true nation? In Stone Voices, Neal Ascherson launches what he calls an imaginative invasion of his native land, searching for the relationships, themes, and fantasies that make up ?Scotland.?

Beginning with a breathtaking portrait of the country?s landscape, and of the way humanity has indelibly marked even its rockiest contours, Ascherson takes us on a journey through Scotland?s past, interweaving his historical accounts with a rollicking report on a back-country bus expedition he joined during the 1997 referendum campaign that led to Scotland?s first modern Parliament. He asked voters then what kind of country they hoped for, what they feared, and what they expected?questions that animate his book as well.

In his search for a nation, Acherson explores many themes: the slow, hybrid formation of the Scottish people over centuries of successive immigrations; the way their most renowned intellectuals and writers came to hate the national church; the peculiar nature of their diaspora; the coexistence of their search for an ?authentic? Scotland with the myths others create; and the Scots? proud sense of true independence. Stone Voices enlightens us about Scotland, about Europe, and about the conditions for freedom that we must all seek today.

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