The visual arts throughout the post-war era have made an invaluable contribution to the cultural development of modern and contemporary Scotland. Joan Eardley, Alan Davie, Eduardo Paolozzi, Ian Hamilton Finlay, Boyle Family, Craigie Aitchison, Barbara Rae John Bellany, Alexander Moffat, John McLean, Bill Scott, Joyce Cairns, Steven Campbell, Ken Currie, Lys Hansen, Alison Watt, Douglas Gordon and Kevin Harman – these are some of the artists whose work reflects the radical and complex trans...

In comparison with many who write about contemporary art, Hare is never self indulgent or wilfully obscure – there is no bogus theorising to be found here. From the Foreword by ALEXANDER MOFFAT Alan Davie • Eduardo Paolozzi • William Turnbull • Janet Boulton • Ian Hamilton Finlay • Joan Eardley • Anthony Hatwell • Colquhoun and MacBryde • Boyle Family • Jack Knox • Barbara Rae • Lys Hansen • Joyce Cairns • Doug Cocker • John Kirkwood • Steven Campbell • Ken Currie • Peter Howson • Henry Ko...

Illustrated with 167 full colour images, this landmark book charts Alexander Moffat's career from student days at Edinburgh College of Art in the 1960s to the recent Scotland's Voices. Iconic portraits of major figures in literature and the other arts are represented. The cultural significance of the visual chronicle Moffat has created lies in his approach to portraiture. He aims not only to capture a sitter's appearance but also to convey something of their inner character, reaching 'a ba...

"I had to fight all my life to survive. They were all against me, but I beat the bastards and left them in the ditch." – Ty Cobb"Cobb is a prick. But he sure can hit. God Almighty, that man can hit." – Babe RuthAs one of America’s oldest and most beloved sports, baseball has long been touted as the national pastime, but of all the millions of people who have played it over the last few centuries, few have influenced Major League Baseball like Ty Cobb, whose career spanned o...

JCPenney was the quintessential American company. Since James Cash Penney opened his first store in the small mining town of Kemmerer, Wyoming, in 1902, this unique institution has been an iconic part of the national landscape. Founded and run on the core principles of thrift, hard work, and good citizenship, the retail giant prospered throughout the 20th century, even during the Great Depression, as American citizens came to rely on it for its good values and service. But by the year 2000...

In his introduction to The Jackie Robinson Reader, sports historian Jules Tygiel succinctly observed, “Extraordinary lives often reveal ordinary truths. Jackie Robinson was born in 1919 and died in 1972. He crammed into these brief fifty-three years a legacy of accomplishment, acclaim, controversy, and influence matched by few Americans. He was, even before his historic baseball breakthrough, an athlete of legendary proportions. He won fame and adulation as the first African-American...

The 19th century saw the rise of one of the largest, most powerful empires of the modern era. The sun never set on the British Empire, whose holdings spanned the globe, in one form or another. Its naval supremacy linked the Commonwealth of Canada with the colonies in South Africa and India, and through them trade flowed east and west. An integral but underutilized part of this vast trade network included China, a reclusive Asian kingdom closed off from the Western world that desired none o...

More often than not, the Romani are branded by even those who fancy themselves liberals as “pikeys,” “gyppos,” and “gips.” There's also a regrettably common term, “gypped,” meaning “to cheat, or swindle,” which perpetuates the damaging stereotype that the Roma are dishonest nuisances and societal pests. Even well-intentioned attempts to shine the spotlight on the community have sometimes been counterproductive, for they are often reduced to no more than exotic, whimsical entertainers for t...

In 1913, Mary Phagan, a young Georgia factory girl and the daughter of tenant farmers, was raped and killed, and suspicion fell upon Leo Frank, the Jewish-American factory manager, who was subsequently arrested, tried, and convicted of her murder based on the thinnest of circumstantial evidence. The entire case against Frank rested on the testimony of the factory janitor, Jim Conley, despite the fact Conley had been arrested almost immediately after Frank when he was spotted washing what a...

“We are so superior to the Mexicans in race, in organization, in discipline, in morality and in elevation of feeling, that I beg your Excellency to be so good as to inform the emperor that I am already master of Mexico.” - French General Charles de Lorencez before the Battle of PueblaThere are two great misconceptions about Cinco de Mayo in the United States, despite the fact it has become one of the country’s most beloved days. The first misconception is that the date marks the In...

After being forced out of Rhodes by the Ottomans in the early 16th century, the Knights Hospitaller spent seven years residing in Sicily without an official home or garrison, but around 1530, Holy Roman Emperor Charles V decided to gift the order the islands of Malta and Gozo, as well as the port city of Tripoli in North Africa, as a fiefdom. The emperor’s motivations varied, but most historians believe he granted the knights the territory partially out of religious devotion and mainly to ...

Werewolves have long been a staple of popular culture. In the 19th century and 20th century, there were countless books, plays, and films about people who turned into wolves or wolf like humanoids and went on rampages. The figure of the werewolf is so familiar that people across the world are familiar with the folklore, and the beliefs that they transform during a full moon, can only be stopped with silver, and transmit their disease by biting their victims.In fact, those beliefs w...