Capital of the Mind

In the early eighteenth century, Edinburgh was a fi lthy backwater town synonymous with poverty and disease. Yet by the century's end, it had become the marvel of modern Europe, home to some of the fi nest minds of the day and the scene of breathtaking innovations in architecture, politics, economics, science and the arts. Pioneers such as David Hume, Robert Burns, James Hutton, Adam Smith and Sir Walter Scott transformed the way we understand our perceptions and feelings, sickness and health, industry and trade, relations between the sexes, the natural world, and the purpose of existence. In this acclaimed book, James Buchan beautifully reconstructs the intimate geographic scale and boundless intellectual milieu of Enlightenment Edinburgh. With the scholarship of an historian and the elegance of a novelist, he tells the story of the triumph of this unlikely town and the men whose vision changed it utterly.