Book excerpt: Dr Gaskell's pioneering study of social and economic change in a west Highland parish during the last century has come to be regarded as a classic of local history, a book which raises issues that are still of general and indeed of national importance. But Morvern Transformed is more than a study of history: it is (to quote Professor R. H. Campbell's new Introduction) 'a fascinating portrayal of a way of life which, only a century old, is already as different from the present as it was in its own day from the way of life another century before.'