In 1995 Bank of Scotland celebrated 300 years as Britain's oldest commercial bank. Voted 'most admired bank', respected by competitors, applauded by investors and trusted by customers, it looked forward to the next three hundred. Less than 15 years later it was bust, reviled as part of the spectacular collapse of HBOS, the conglomerate it had joined. One of the high-profile victims of the credit crunch, its spectacular fall caused seismic shock waves throughout the financial world. What we...

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 transforme...

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 secur...

More often than not, when people talk about being "stressed out", or being "under a lot of pressure", they are really experiencing a dysfunctional amount of anxiety. Anxiety is technically a figment (product) of imagination. Imagination is a double edge sword. It makes us creative, and can even alert us to potentially life-endangering threats. However, millions of people often spend too much time in their imaginations, and generate a lot of needless anxiety, sometimes to the point of it be...

If you:Hate shopping for clothesAre tired of always putting the weight back onAre embarrassed to be seen nakedAre starting to lose hope…Then I have some good news for you. Results are possible, you just have to:Weed out the bad health adviceWork with your body instead of against itUnderstand that training your body without training your mind has never worked and will never work!Follow a method that is proven and works every t...

Newest in town!The days are over when you place yourself on fasting because you need to have good shape.Many times, obesity is not the outcome of more consumption of food, but an outcome of the wrong selection of diets into the meal.How do you feel when you fully understand how to regulate your weight because there were major root causes in your palms?I know you will have a say!How about when you were guided that accepting calorie-reduction error is an an...

An anthology of seventy poets writing west of the Mississippi, including William Pitt Root, Alberto Rios, Naomi Shihab Nye, Jim Simmerman, and Sandra Alcosser.

Looking back now, I am more than ever aware of the part that [Satyajit] Ray played in shaping the imaginary universe of my childhood and youth. I see this even in such details as my interest in science and science fiction; in ghost stories and the fantastical…When I saw Agantuk [The Stranger], in which the main character is an anthropologist, I began to wonder whether my interest in anthropology too, owed something,perhaps subconsciously, to Ray…, ruminates Amitav Ghosh in this book. Ghosh...