Few years have reshaped the modern world as decisively as the twelve months of 1776. James Watt’s improved steam engine went into commercial operation for the first time, lighting the fuse of the Industrial Revolution. The American colonies were accelerating toward a Declaration of Independence grounded in the natural rights of man. And on March 9, 1776, a Scottish professor published a book that changed the world: An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations appeared in two volumes from a London bookseller, and nothing was quite the same afterwards.