It's pretty hard to find people who are as into the history of musical instruments as I am. I've never gotten that into synthesizer history, but I know the basics. Violin family? Wind family, brass family? dig it.
A friend of mine did her Masters in Musicology on Romanian folk music. A little different, but she might have some book recommendations if you want them.
I'm not super knowledgeable about the cultural significance stuff, but the construction, and the bagpipe's movement around with Celtic cultures is really cool. Like, did you know there's a Celtic culture in Spain? and they have their own kind of Bagpipe?
yeah. there's kind of like, two main places that bagpipes come from, culturally (Idunno if anyone has studied enough or has enough evidence to argue that they come from a single ancestor). There's sort of an Arabic/Turkic tradition that's relatively low on drones (or has no drones), and then the Celtic pipes which are more likely to have more drones. Really though, just about every European culture has pipes somewhere (and a lot of arabic ones too). Their double reed and air bag make for loud sounds, which are popular for outdoor music and dance.