From droving to driving, heilan coos to long horns, "Highland Cowboys" explores the links between the two cattle cultures of Scotland and America through music, song, dance, and folklore. The vast number of Scots who emigrated to North America, whether through forcible eviction during the Highland Clearances or voluntarily in the hope of a better life, has been well documented. With them they took their culture, their language, their music and their skills. Cattle droving in Scotland was an established profession from the 16th century, and many such migrants took cowboy jobs in the American West. The medium of music paints a vivid picture of their social and personal lives, and describes a mutual exchange as music crossed and re-crossed the Atlantic creating strong links between the old culture and the new. This unique exploration of the cowboy culture sheds new light on the everyday life of the cattle communities.

The Highland Clearances Trail answers the where, why, what and whens of the Highland Clearances. Taking you around the significant sites of the Highland Clearances this vivid guide gives a scholarly introduction to a tragic moment in Scotland's history. Perthshire, Ross-Shire, Arran, Sutherland and Caithness are among the many areas covered. With full background information supplied, along with maps and illustrations, The Highland Clearances Trail provides an alternative route around the Highlands that will leave the reader with a deeper understanding of this sublime landscape.

In an industry littered with great characters and extraordinary personalities, Joe Hobbs stands out as one of the whisky world’s most colourful and interesting entrepreneurs, a man who packed more into each decade of his life than most people manage in a lifetime. Whilst individual episodes and activities of his life are quite well known, his fascinating and wide-ranging full life story has not been told before, despite the fact Joe features in Whisky Magazine’s list of ‘Top 100 Most Influential Whisky Figures’ of all time. Not Your Average Joe tells the fascinating story of how the son of a bankrupt English farmer rose to be one of the leading figures in the history of the Scotch whisky industry, making two fortunes and losing one along the way. The book explains Joe’s pioneering exploits as one of the first military aviators during WW1; his controversial rum-running activities into the USA during Prohibition in the 1920s; his leading role in designing and building the city of Vancouver’s first skyscraper; his rise as one of the leading Scotch whisky ‘barons’; and his pioneering transformation of a derelict 10,000 acre Scottish Highland estate into the UK’s first cattle ranch during Britain’s ‘battle for beef’ in the lean years after WW2.

Cities rather than individual pioneers have been the driving force in the settlement and economic development of the western half of North America. Throughout the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries, western urban centers served as starting points for conquest and settlement. As these frontier cities matured into metropolitan centers, they grew from imitators of eastern culture and outposts of eastern capital into independent sources of economic, cultural, and intellectual change. From the Gulf of Alaska to the Mississippi River and from the binational metropolis of San Diego-Tijuana to the Prairie Province capitals of Canada, Carl Abbott explores the complex urban history of western Canada and the United States. The evolution of western cities from stations for exploration and military occupation to contemporary entry points for migration and components of a global economy reminds us that it is cities that "won the West." And today, as cultural change increasingly moves from west to east, Abbott argues that the urban West represents a new center from which emerging patterns of behavior and changing customs will help to shape North America in the twenty-first century.

Highland Tank Our Settlement is a black and white book about the history of the remaining structures in the original 1867 Settlement in Texas City, Texas 150 years after the Civil War and slavery. Each structure, place, or building is listed by its original name.

As historian Gunnar Nerheim states in his introduction, “Norway is a foreign country to Texans, and Texas is a foreign country to Norwegians. Neither in Norway nor Texas has there been any awareness that so many Norwegians settled in antebellum Texas.” Norsemen Deep in the Heart of Texas brings Norwegian settlement in Texas to light and in doing so offers the first-ever comprehensive history of Norwegians in Texas. Fluent in both English and Norwegian, Nerheim has done what no other historian has done by combining primary and secondary sources from both languages and both countries. A well-established European scholar, Nerheim examines these never-before-referenced sources, telling the story of Norwegian immigration to Texas, explaining the contexts of Norwegian immigration to Texas in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and uncovering its significance to the histories of both countries. The larger historical context reveals that immigration to Texas operated as part of dynamic circumstances on both sides of the Atlantic, including slavery and the Civil War. Drawn from the perspectives of both regions, the history of Norwegian settlement in Texas provide new insights into European immigration. Readers interested in Texas, Norwegian, and trans-Atlantic history, as well as nineteenth-century immigration, will find new horizons in Norsemen Deep in the Heart of Texas.

Despite being neighbouring provinces with long ranching histories, British Columbia and Alberta saw their ranching techniques develop quite differently. As most ranching styles were based on one of the two dominant styles in use south of the border, BC ranchers tended to adopt the California style whereas Alberta took its lead from Texas. But the different practices actually go back much further. Cattle cultures in southwestern Spain, sub-Saharan Africa and the British highlands all shaped the basis of North American ranching. Digging deep into the origins of cowboy culture, Ken Mather tells the stories of men and women on the ranching frontiers of British Columbia and Alberta and reveals little-known details that help us understand the beginnings of ranching in these two provinces.