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An excellent portrayal (despite its age) of "who were the Scots-Irish, and why does it matter?" Neither an academic tome nor a populist page-turner, but something in between, aimed at the general reader but without breezing past the difficulties. Pulls together lots of really disparate sources in an area where even professional historians often have trouble locating enough primary sources. Rescues the facts about an immigrant stream that left almost no written record and that's been the unfortunate subject of some concerted myth-making efforts.

I very much appreciate this variety of presentation of history. It's not just a collection of disconnected vignettes and factoids. But it doesn't lean too far the other way either, trying to shoehorn reality into its own "narrative arc". Wherever reality is puzzling or inconsistent or undocumented, the book bends gracefully to accommodate the actuality (rather than taking the other route of forcing reality to conform to preconceived notions of the book).

With its extensive footnotes and sober presentation, it puts the lie to pretty much everything I've ever read or heard or imagined about the Scots-Irish. (It also, in just a few pages, thoroughly debunks a myth-making effort from the early 20th century, bits of which I've encountered before without really understanding where they came from.:-)

For me, one key takeaway was just how much the Scots-Irish involvement in politics varied from one of the 13 Colonies to another, all the way from practically running the government (Pennsylvania) to gross anarchy (South Carolina). My second key takeaway is the Scots-Irish merged with other streams of immigrants and largely lost their independent identity by shortly after the time of the American Revolution. My third takeaway is just how much Scots-Irish culture influenced what we now think of as "American" culture, but by assimilation and blending rather than by retaining any sort of independent identity.