Born Fighting

Where I heard about it

• Dissident Teacher — on A Library to Build Great Americans, the Substack writer’s 468-title curriculum (December 2025), in the Ages 13–99+ band under History. The list pairs it with Arthur Herman’s How the Scots Invented the Modern World, already in my anti-library — the same population, one book on what they did in Scotland and one on what they did in America.

About this edition

Webb follows the Lowland Scots who were settled in Ulster and then emigrated in large numbers to the American backcountry in the eighteenth century, running from the border wars through Ulster and Appalachia to the present, with his own family’s history woven through. It is a work of advocacy as much as history, written by a former Marine officer, Secretary of the Navy and later United States senator, and historians have criticised the thesis for treating a large and mixed migration as a single continuous folk culture. Read it as a strong argument about American identity rather than a settled account.

Connections

• A Library to Build Great Americans — the list this came from.
• James Webb — the author; Marine officer, Navy Secretary, senator, novelist.
• How the Scots Invented the Modern World — Herman’s book on the same people in Scotland, also on this list and already carded.
• Founding Fathers — the backcountry population the Revolution drew on, on Webb’s account.
• Institutions — or the distrust of them, which is the cultural trait he is tracking.
• History — popular ethnic history and its risks.