""Hard Neighbors is a scholarly book, well researched, deeply documented, and set in the colonial and early American past. The author's explicit aim - which he achieves admirably - is to detail the complexity of relations between Native Americans and the Scotch-Irish, and break down monolithic notions of 'white colonists' and 'European settlers.'"" -- Sara Bhatia, Washington Monthly"Colin Calloway seeks neither to celebrate nor to condemn the Scotch-Irish, but to understand them. Using all the skills of a gifted historian, he succeeds admirably in this task. Renowned for his work on Native Americans, he now offers a vivid, judicious, and insightful account of their antagonists-an elusive group of settler colonists who carved out a new American identity through violence." -- Kevin Kenny, Glucksman Professor of History, New York University"In this vivid and trenchant book, Colin Calloway deftly reveals violent frontiers of expanding settlements and persistent Native resistance. Transcending conventional profiling of the Scotch-Irish frontier folk as uniquely combative, Calloway uncovers the broad popularity of their sense of grievance towards imperial or national governments. In their disdain for elites as well as another race, the Scotch Irish literally pioneered an American nexus of assertion and complaint that endures to sway millions of voters.

" -- Alan Taylor, author of American Civil Wars: A Continental History, 1850-1873"Arguing that what happened on the frontier was as significant to the foundational myth of American democracy as what happened in Philadelphia, Colin Calloway reveals how the Scotch Irish defined that myth, one born of conflict with Indigenous peoples in an ever-receding West and with the expansionism of an imperial East. Anyone who wants to follow the national narrative unspooling under these contending forces over three centuries should read this monumental and masterful account of the American past." -- Warren Hofstra, Shenandoah University"Colin Calloway seeks neither to celebrate nor to condemn the Scotch-Irish, but to understand them. Using all the skills of a gifted historian, he succeeds admirably in this task. Renowned for his work on Native Americans, he now offers a vivid, judicious, and insightful account of their antagonists-an elusive group of settler colonists who carved out a new American identity through violence." -- Kevin Kenny, Glucksman Professor of History"In this vivid and trenchant book, Colin Calloway deftly reveals violent frontiers of expanding settlements and persistent Native resistance. Transcending conventional profiling of the Scotch-Irish frontier folk as uniquely combative, Calloway uncovers the broad popularity of their sense of grievance towards imperial or national governments. In their disdain for elites as well as another race, the Scotch Irish literally pioneered an American nexus of assertion and complaint that endures to sway millions of voters.

" -- Alan Taylor, author of American Civil Wars: A Continental History, 1850-1873"Arguing that what happened on the frontier was as significant to the foundational myth of American democracy as what happened in Philadelphia, Colin Calloway reveals how the Scotch Irish defined that myth, one born of conflict with Indigenous peoples in an ever-receding West and with the expansionism of an imperial East. Anyone who wants to follow the national narrative unspooling under these contending forces over three centuries should read this monumental and masterful account of the American past." -- Warren Hofstra, Shenandoah University"Hard Neighbors represents a seminal reappraisal of the early decades of American expansion." -- Peter Cozzens, Wall Street Journal.