This work presents the history of how Scotland produced the institutions, beliefs and human character that have made the West into the most powerful culture in the world. Within one hundred years, the nation that began the 18th century dominated by the harsh and repressive Scottish Kirk had evolved into Europe's most literate society, producing an idea of modernity that has shaped much of civilisation as we know it. Arthur Herman argues that Scotland's turbulent history, from William Wallace to the Presbyterian Lords of the Covenant, laid the foundations for "the Scottish miracle". He follows the lives and work of thinkers such as Adam Smith and David Hume, writers such as Burns and Boswell, as well as architects, technicians and inventors, and traces their legacy into the 20th century.