Books

Book of the month

All fun and games until somebody loses an eye By Christopher Brookmyre
Jane Fleming, forty-six and three years a grandmother, has always played by the rules, never hurt anybody, never lied, never even had a parking ticket. But she's about to put all that right in a very big way...
A sharp, memorable and occasionally surprisingly touching book.
RRP £6.99 Our price £5.24

SUMMER PROMOTION

**Dundee University Bookshop is running a summer promotion which will include 10 great fiction titles at 25 % off for holiday reading.**

Social Archaeology of Funerary Remains
edited by Rebecca Gowland and Christopher Knüsel

Human bones are the most tangible and direct form of evidence for understanding how people lived in the past, who they were, and where they came from. The human skeleton is not a universal, static entity; it is a unique repository for social information concerning the lifestyles and lifeways of past peoples, shedding light on, amongst other things, craft and occupational activities, diet, living conditions and health, migration and mobility, and social inter-actions. As a result, human skeletal remains must rank as one of the (if not the) most information-rich sources of archaeological evidence.

This book represents a desire to marry the cultural aspects of burial with the anthropology of the deceased so as to include a comprehensive perspective on the human, faunal, and artefactual aspects of burial of past societies, their practices, beliefs, and social organisation.

The papers in this book take an incomplete funerary analysis that is a major part of the focus of standard archaeological enquiry, recombines it with the skeletal report that is often a separate and incompletely synthesised addendum, and replaces people (the dead) as a focus rather than as an adjunct to the material remains of their lives and activities. In doing so, they reveal not only the interpretative strength of such an approach but also, importantly, the thought processes that researchers adopt to link what have been two separate realms of concern. The skeleton is not simply a clothes-horse for cultural symbolism and, as these papers demonstrate, the skeleton and its context need to be fully integrated as part of a more holistic and meaningful component of archaeological and anthropological research.

Rebecca Gowland is a postdoctoral research assistant in the Unit of Human Anatomy and Forensic Anthropology in the School of Life Sciences at the University of Dundee.

Battle for the North
The Tay and Forth Bridges and the 19th Century Railway Wars
By Charles McKean
ISBN: 186207 8521
Granta Books

The first Tay Bridge collapsed into the sea in 1879 only 18 months after it had opened, drowning 72 people travelling by train to Dundee. Shock reverberated through Britain, and the public demanded answers. The bridge had been hailed as a triumph of construction, and its fall shook society's confidence in the excellence of Victorian engineering.

This epic tale of engineering follows the rise and fall of the career of engineer Thomas Bouch, ostracised from the engineering community when his bridge crashed into the Tay estuary. Over four decades, a fierce and dirty railway war drove forward the construction of the two largest railway bridges in the world, symbols of a modernising Scotland.

Charles McKean offers new conclusions about why the first Tay Bridge collapsed and tells how the Forth and Tay bridges eventually became reality. He follows the railway battle for Scotland from 1845 - 95 and the people it involved: from the Victorian entrepreneurs, poets, journalists, lawyers, town councils; to the engineers, briggers, excavators and rivet boys; to the pioneering and inventive contractor William Arrol - who constructed the bridges that stand today. Meticulously researched and vividly told, Battle for the North explores the complicated reality underlying the Victorian pursuit of progress.

Charles McKean is Professor of Architectural History at the University of Dundee.

600 years of Scottish history: the making and unmaking of the nation

As we approach the 300th anniversary of the union of the parliaments of Scotland and England (1707), a new series of five volumes of Scottish history is set to inspire and deepen enthusiasm for delving into and thinking about the nation's past.

Scotland: The Making and Unmaking of the Nation c.1100-1707 is edited by University historians Professor Bob Harris and Dr Alan MacDonald.

The series will expose recent academic research on Scottish history to a wide readership and will be of interest to anyone eager to know about Scotland's past or the historical context for present day issues.

Dundee University Press recently announced publication of volumes 1 and 3. Volumes 2, 4 and 5 will be published over the coming two years.

The series is designed to accompany the popular distance learning courses pioneered by the University in association with The Open University.

The books also provide a route for readers to develop their own skills as students of history, encouraging questioning and debate, addressing the use of primary sources, challenging conceptual questions, previous interpretations and sources.

Contributors from a range of universities and learned institutions ensure a rich, diverse, stimulating and scholarly content, guiding the reader on a journey through a historical landscape of conflict, kingship, church, town, country, architecture, literature.

The books offer not just an excellent introduction to recent historical work but also a context for further reading and investigation. Their expansive coverage of cultural history gives an inclusive, broad vision of Scotland's past, reflecting current historical trends and a wealth of scholarship. A key - and contemporary - theme throughout the series is Scotland's involvement in a broader European past.

Volume 1: Origins to c.1500 covers the key aspects of early Scottish medieval history at a time of considerable change but when written sources were relatively meagre.

Volume 3: Readings c1100-1500 - brings together 22 key texts on the most important topics for Scotland over this 400 year period.

Professor Bob Harris said, "In the year 1100 few members of the Scottish population would in their lifetime ever see a written document with a bearing on their history. By the time publication of this series is complete in 2007 anyone who wishes to, wherever they live in the world, will be able to study Scottish history from 1100 to the present day by distance learning."

"Our hope is that these volumes will inspire and deepen enthusiasm for the investigation of the Scottish past. Perhaps they will even encourage some to examine aspects of their own community history based on themes explored here."

Scotland: The Making and Unmaking of a Nation follows the earlier series Modern Scottish History: 1707 to the Present, which was published in five volumes in 1995 as a collaboration between the University of Dundee and the Open University who jointly pioneered a distance learning course on Scottish history of the period.

Scotland: The Making and Unmaking of a Nation c1100-1707

Published by Dundee University Press
Volume 1 ISBN 1 845860047 Price £16.99
Volume 3 ISBN 1 845860055 Price £16.99