Set Adrift Upon the World

Set Adrift Upon the World PDF Author: James Hunter
Publisher: Birlinn Ltd
ISBN: 0857902628
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 426

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Book Description
Winner of Saltire Scottish History Book of the Year They would be better dead, they said, than set adrift upon the world. But set adrift they were - thousands of them, their communities destroyed, their homes demolished and burned. Such were the Sutherland Clearances, an extraordinary episode, involving the deliberate depopulation of much of a Scottish county. What was done in the course of that episode was planned and carried out by a small group of men and one woman. Most of those involved wrote a great deal about their actions, intentions and feelings, and much of it has been preserved. There are no equivalent collections of material from those whose communities ceased to exist. Their feelings and fears are harder to access, but they are by no means irrecoverable. In this book James Hunter tells the story of the Sutherland Clearances. His researches took him to archives in Scotland, England and Canada, to the now deserted straths of Sutherland, to the frozen shores of Hudson Bay. The result is a gripping, moving, definitive account of a people's struggle for survival in the face of tragedy and disaster which includes experiences which have not featured in any previous such account.

Set Adrift Upon the World

Set Adrift Upon the World PDF Author: James Hunter
Publisher: Birlinn Ltd
ISBN: 0857902628
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 426

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Book Description
Winner of Saltire Scottish History Book of the Year They would be better dead, they said, than set adrift upon the world. But set adrift they were - thousands of them, their communities destroyed, their homes demolished and burned. Such were the Sutherland Clearances, an extraordinary episode, involving the deliberate depopulation of much of a Scottish county. What was done in the course of that episode was planned and carried out by a small group of men and one woman. Most of those involved wrote a great deal about their actions, intentions and feelings, and much of it has been preserved. There are no equivalent collections of material from those whose communities ceased to exist. Their feelings and fears are harder to access, but they are by no means irrecoverable. In this book James Hunter tells the story of the Sutherland Clearances. His researches took him to archives in Scotland, England and Canada, to the now deserted straths of Sutherland, to the frozen shores of Hudson Bay. The result is a gripping, moving, definitive account of a people's struggle for survival in the face of tragedy and disaster which includes experiences which have not featured in any previous such account.

The Appin Murder

The Appin Murder PDF Author: James Hunter
Publisher: Birlinn
ISBN: 1788853229
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 301

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Book Description
On a hillside near Ballachulish in the Scottish Highlands in May 1752, a rider is assassinated by a gunman. The murdered man is Colin Campbell, a government agent traveling to nearby Duror where he’s evicting farm tenants to make way for his relatives. Campbell’s killer evades capture, but Britain’s rulers insist this challenge to their authority must result in a hanging. The sacrificial victim is James Stewart, who is organizing resistance to Campbell’s takeover of lands long held by his clan, the Appin Stewarts. James is a veteran of the Highland uprising crushed in April 1746 at Culloden. In Duror he sees homes torched by troops using terror tactics against rebel Highlanders. The same brutal response to dissent means that James’s corpse will for years hang from a towering gibbet and leave a community utterly ravaged. Introducing this new edition of his account of what came to be called the Appin Murder, historian James Hunter tells how his own Duror upbringing introduced him to the tragic story of James Stewart.

Insurrection

Insurrection PDF Author: James Hunter
Publisher: Birlinn Ltd
ISBN: 1788852311
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 396

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Book Description
'A gripping, heart-breaking account of the famine winter of 1847' - Rosemary Goring, The Herald Longlisted for the Highland Book Prize When Scotland's 1846 potato crop was wiped out by blight, the country was plunged into crisis. In the Hebrides and the West Highlands a huge relief effort came too late to prevent starvation and death. Further east, meanwhile, towns and villages from Aberdeen to Wick and Thurso, rose up in protest at the cost of the oatmeal that replaced potatoes as people's basic foodstuff. Oatmeal's soaring price was blamed on the export of grain by farmers and landlords cashing in on even higher prices elsewhere. As a bitter winter gripped and families feared a repeat of the calamitous famine then ravaging Ireland, grain carts were seized, ships boarded, harbours blockaded, a jail forced open, the military confronted. The army fired on one set of rioters. Savage sentences were imposed on others. But thousands-strong crowds also gained key concessions. Above all they won cheaper food. Those dramatic events have long been ignored or forgotten. Now, in James Hunter, they have their historian. The story he tells is, by turns, moving, anger-making and inspiring. In an era of food banks and growing poverty, it is also very timely.

The Making of the Crofting Community

The Making of the Crofting Community PDF Author: James Hunter
Publisher: Birlinn Ltd
ISBN: 0857902865
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 542

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Book Description
This book has been seminal in bringing to the fore the injustices that have been inflicted on the Highlands in the name of government and landlord – injustices often lost in the name of dry statistics and academic balance. Written by a man who has gone on to become both an award-winning historian of the Highlands and a leading figure in the public life of the region, The Making of the Crofting Community has attracted praise, inspired debate, and provoked outrage and controversy over the years. This book remains necessary to challenge standard academic interpretations of the Highland past. Having long been one of the classics of Birlinn's John Donald list, this revised and updated new edition includes a substantial new preface and an extensive reworking of the existing text.

World Set Free

World Set Free PDF Author: H. G. Wells
Publisher: E-Kitap Projesi & Cheapest Books
ISBN: 6155565228
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 313

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Book Description
THE WORLD SET FREE was written in 1913 and published early in 1914, and it is the latest of a series of three fantasias of possibility, stories which all turn on the possible developments in the future of some contemporary force or group of forces. The World Set Free was written under the immediate shadow of the Great War. Every intelligent person in the world felt that disaster was impending and knew no way of averting it, but few of us realised in the earlier half of 1914 how near the crash was to us. The reader will be amused to find that here it is put off until the year 1956. He may naturally want to know the reason for what will seem now a quite extraordinary delay. As a prophet, the author must confess he has always been inclined to be rather a slow prophet.The war aeroplane in the world of reality, for example, beat the forecast in Anticipations by about twenty years or so. I suppose a desire not to shock the sceptical reader's sense of use and wont and perhaps a less creditable disposition to hedge, have something to do with this dating forward of one's main events, but in the particular case of The World Set Free there was, I think, another motive in holding the Great War back, and that was to allow the chemist to get well forward with his discovery of the release of atomic energy. 1956or for that matter 2056may be none too late for that crowning revolution in human potentialities. And apart from this procrastination of over forty years, the guess at the opening phase of the war was fairly lucky; the forecast of an alliance of the Central Empires, the opening campaign through the Netherlands, and the despatch of the British Expeditionary Force were all justified before the book had been published six months. And the opening section of Chapter the Second remains now, after the reality has happened, a fairly adequate diagnosis of the essentials of the matter. One happy hit (in Chapter the Second, Section 2), on which the writer may congratulate himself, is the forecast that under modern conditions it would be quite impossible for any great general to emerge to supremacy and concentrate the enthusiasm of the armies of either side.There could be no Alexanders or Napoleons. And we soon heard the scientific corps muttering, 'These old fools,' exactly as it is here foretold.These, however, are small details, and the misses in the story far outnumber the hits. It is the main thesis which is still of interest now; the thesis that because of the development of scientific knowledge, separate sovereign states and separate sovereign empires are no longer possible in the world, that to attempt to keep on with the old system is to heap disaster upon disaster for mankind and perhaps to destroy our race altogether. The remaining interest of this book now is the sustained validity of this thesis and the discussion of the possible ending of war on the earth.

The Highland Clearances

The Highland Clearances PDF Author: Eric Richards
Publisher: Birlinn
ISBN: 0857905244
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 463

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Book Description
The Highland Clearances stands out as one of the most emotive chapters in the history of Scotland. This book traces the origins of the Clearances from the eighteenth century to their culmination in the crofting legislation of the 1880s. In considering both the terrible suffering of the Highland people as well as the stark choices that faced landowners during a period of rapid economic change, it shows how the Clearances were one of many 'attempted' solutions to the problem of how to maintain a population on marginal and infertile land, and were, in fact, part of a wider European movement of rural depopulation. In drawing attention away from the mythology to the hard facts of what actually happened, The Highland Clearances offers a balanced analysis of events which created a terrible scar on the Highland and Gaelic imagination.

A People Adrift

A People Adrift PDF Author: Peter Steinfels
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 9780743261449
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 454

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Book Description
In this national bestseller, the most influential layman in the United States reports that the Roman Catholic Church in America must either profoundly reform or lapse into permanent irrelevance.

Beyond Courage

Beyond Courage PDF Author: Robert Aros
Publisher: Shore Publishing
ISBN: 9780963870407
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 276

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Book Description
Rarely does a book come along that is so absorbing that the reader cannot put the book down. Such a book is BEYOND COURAGE. Robert Aros, along with veteran writer Rob Ternan, has aptly recorded the action packed story of himself, his wife Margaret & their 17-year-old son Christian being shipwrecked & set adrift in a tiny rubber raft for 26 days in the South Pacific. They survived unbelievable odds as El Nino crazed seas, strange winds, fateful blunders & bumbling rescue efforts conspired to strip them of food, water & even hope itself. A family tale of conflict, survival, faith & love. REVIEWS: "it is definitely the type of book that once you start, you cannot put it down. The variety of emotions, fear, anxiety, love, & hope saturate every page. Definitely not your typical 'LOST AT SEA STORY', but a true adventure."--David Underwood. "I read the first chapter & was hooked. It pulled me right in. It was not overly wordy, & didn't beat around the bush, but got right into the action."--Carol Jackson, Librarian. "Terse honest account of an extraordinary human experience. It steers clear of sentimentality & heads straight for the stronger emotions, fear, desperation & ultimately joy."--Vivian Reed, Librarian. Shore Publishing, 239 Nieto Ave., Suite A, Long Beach, CA 90803. (800) 655-8689.

Adrift

Adrift PDF Author: W. Michael Gear
Publisher: Astra Publishing House
ISBN: 0756417171
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 513

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Book Description
The fifth book in the thrilling Donovan sci-fi series returns to a treacherous alien planet where corporate threats and dangerous creatures imperil the lives of the colonists. The Maritime Unit had landed in paradise. After a terrifying ten-year transit from Solar System aboard the Ashanti, the small band of oceanographers and marine scientists were finally settled. Perched on a reef five hundred kilometers out from shore, they were about to embark on the first exploration of Donovan's seas. For the twenty-two adults and nine children, everything is new, exciting, and filled with wonder as they discover dazzling sea creatures, stunning plant life, and fascinating organisms. But Donovan is never what it seems; the changes in the children were innocuous--oddities of behavior normal to kids who'd found themselves in a new world. Even then it was too late. An alien intelligence, with its own agenda, now possesses the children, and it will use them in a most insidious way: as the perfect weapons. How can you fight back when the enemy is smarter than you are, and wears the face of your own child? Welcome to Donovan.

Seaworthy

Seaworthy PDF Author: T. R. Pearson
Publisher: Three Rivers Press
ISBN: 030733595X
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 280

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Book Description
Chronicles the unusual adventures and misadventures of eccentric extreme sportsman William Willis, known for taking lengthy, frequently ill-prepared rafting trips across the major oceans of the world in his sixties and seventies. Reprint. 20,000 first printing.