Glasgow's Great Exhibitions: 1888, 1901, 1911, 1938, 1988

Like the exhibitions themselves, this profusely illustrated book is both instructive and entertaining, covering a vast range of topics-art and industry, ships and machinery, architecture, Empire, women, royalty, and tourism-not to mention woollen underwear and self-pouring teapots. The five great show chart in a particularly accessible way a century of profound social and economic change, from the Victorian self-confidence of the Second City of Empire, to the Scottish nationalism of 1911, to a brief glimpse of modern utopia in 1938, and finally the regeneration of derelict dockland for 1988's Garden Festival.