Unique among the leading figures of the Scottish Enlightenment, Ferguson saw two eighteenth-century revolutions, the American and the French. This monograph contains essays that range across all of Ferguson's works to investigate his engagement with contemporary events and his contributions to our understanding of history and human action.

Adam Ferguson (1723-1816) was a Scottish philosopher and historian best known for his work "An Essay on the History of Civil Society," which was published in 1767.