This is a colourful and stimulating history of modern Scotland. Christopher Harvie brings his inimitable vision to a history of modern Scotland epitomised by political and social change, in what he sees as 'recuperation' through change. This introductory history takes Scotland through two world wars and subsequent social exhaustion, through the re energising adjustments loosely referred to as 'the sixties' to a final endgame of Union versus Independence. The novel structure of Harvie's history mirrors that of a grand engineering project, or a structure as complex as the Forth Railway Bridge: 'three periods of change rendered as towers, and two great cantilevered arches of life in common, over which day to day life proceeds'. This is a final narrative of 'Union versus Independence'. It thematically rebuilts chapters: Economy/Society/Politics/Culture. The '60s' is reinterpreted.