The Goshenhoppen registers of baptisms, marriages, and deaths are the sacramental records of the Catholic mission at Goshenhoppen, now Bally, in Washington Township, Berks County, Pennsylvania. Beginning in 1741, the year the mission was founded, and extending, with some gaps, to 1819, these include sacraments administered at Goshenhoppen and outlying missions in southeastern Pennsylvania, particularly in the counties of Berks, Bucks, Northampton, Montgomery, Lehigh, and Lebanon, an area containing much of the early Germanic population of the state. Goshenhoppen's registers are believed to be not only the oldest extant Catholic church registers in Pennsylvania, but the oldest in existence of the original thirteen colonies Hence their overriding importance in Pennsylvania-German history and genealogy and the reason for their original publication, between 1886 and 1950, in the Records of the American Catholic Historical Society of Philadelphia. Taken as a whole, the Goshenhoppen registers contain entries relating to about 4,000 baptisms, marriages, and deaths, with references to about 15,000 individuals. Added to this work for the first time is a complete name index.

The Brahan Seer is a legendary figure known throughout Scotland and the Scottish Diaspora and indeed anywhere there is an interest in looking into the future. This book traces the legend of the Seer between the sixteenth and twenty-first centuries. It considers the seer figure in relation to aspects of Scottish Highland culture and society that shaped its development during this period. These include the practice and prosecution of witchcraft, the reporting and scientific investigation of instances of second sight, and the perennial belief in and use of prophecy as a means of predicting events. In so doing the book provides a set of historicised contexts for understanding the genesis of the legend and how it changed over time through a synthesis of historical events, oral tradition, folklore and literary Romanticism. It makes a contribution to the debates not only about witchcraft, second sight and prophecy but also about the relationship between 'popular' and 'elite' culture in Scotland. By taking the Brahan Seer as a case study it argues that 'popular' culture is not antithetical to 'elite' culture but rather in constant (and complex) interaction with it.

Millions of Scots have left their homeland during the last 400 years. Until now, they have been written about in general terms. Scottish Exodus breaks new ground by taking particular emigrants, drawn from the once-powerful Clan MacLeod, and discovering what happened to them and their families. These people became, among other things, French aristocrats, Polish resistance fighters, Texan ranchers, New Zealand shepherds, Australian goldminers, Aboriginal and African-American activists, Canadian mounted policemen and Confederate rebels. One nineteenth-century MacLeod even went so far as to swap his Gaelic for Arabic and his Christianity for Islam before settling down comfortably in Cairo. This gripping account of Scotland's worldwide diaspora is based on unpublished documents, letters and family histories. It is also based on the author's travels in the company of today's MacLeods - some of them still in Scotland, others further afield. Scottish Exodus is a tale of disastrous voyages, famine and dispossession, the hazards of pioneering on faraway frontiers. But it is also the moving story of how people separated from Scotland by hundreds of years and thousands of miles continue to identify with the small country where their journeyings began.