It started and ended with a financial catastrophe. The Darien disaster of 1700 drove Scotland into union with England, but spawned the institutions which transformed Edinburgh into a global financial centre. The crash of 2008 wrecked the city's two largest and oldest banks - and its reputation. In the three intervening centuries, Edinburgh became a hothouse of financial innovation, prudent banking, reliable insurance and smart investing. The face of the city changed too as money transformed it from medieval squalor to Georgian elegance. This is the story, not just of the institutions which were respected worldwide, but of the personalities too, such as the two hard-drinking Presbyterian ministers who founded the first actuarially-based pension fund; Sir Walter Scott, who faced financial ruin, but wrote his way out of it; the men who financed American railways and eastern rubber plantations with Scottish money; and Fred Goodwin, notorious CEO of RBS, who took the bank to be the biggest in the world, but crashed and burned in 2008.

Discover one of the Scottish Enlightenment's brightest stars. Among the giants of the Scottish Enlightenment, the name of James Hutton is overlooked. Yet his Theory of the Earth revolutionised the way we think about how our planet was formed and laid the foundation for the science of geology. He was in his time a doctor, a farmer, a businessman, a chemist yet he described himself as a philosopher - a seeker after truth. A friend of James Watt and of Adam Smith, he was a polymath, publishing papers on subjects as diverse as why it rains and a theory of language. He shunned status and official position, refused to give up his strong Scots accent and vulgar speech, loved jokes and could start a party in an empty room. Yet much of his story remains a mystery. His papers, library and mineral collection all vanished after his death and only a handful of letters survive. He seemed to be a lifelong bachelor, yet had a secret son whom he supported throughout his life. This book uses new sources and original documents to bring Hutton the man to life and places him firmly among the geniuses of his time.

In 1938 John Lorne Campbell bought the Hebridean isle of Canna. He wanted to prevent it becoming a rich man's playground (like so many other islands and Highland estates), to preserve a part of traditional Gaelic culture and show that efficient farming methods could be compatible with wildlife conservation and sustainability. But his determination to get the island left him burdened by debt, and even after he gave it to the National Trust for Scotland in 1981 he still had to fight to secure his legacy. This acclaimed book is an insightful and human portrait of one of the twentieth century's most significant scholars of the Gaelic world, and of his 60-year partnership with Margaret Fay Shaw, who together created the world-famous library of Gaelic song and other material at Canna House.