Peatbogs, Plague and Potatoes: How Climate Change and Geology Shaped Scotland's History

by Emma Wood

The environment is not a neutral background to human struggles for power and profit. Scotland's past is affected by these non-human factors as much as anything that man has done. The dramatic environmental consequences of volcanic eruptions, floods or drought are not the only ones to effect our lives and our history. "Climate Change, Peatbogs, Plague and Potatoes" makes Scotland's environmental history easy to understand by summarising the course of human interaction with the non-human environment. The Acts of Union, Culloden and the Highland Clearances are all human events that have all have caused unprecedented impact on the environment still being felt today. As farms, fields and hedges have been replaced by factories, roads and canals Scotland, has been transformed as have the lives of its people. This history charts Scotland's road to modernity and the environment's influential role within it.

240 pages, Paperback

First published July 1, 2008

Reviews

[Karen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting reading, but not a good book to read in bed when half asleep, requires too much concentration of that. But at least I now know what the Caledonian Orogney was and what podsols are!