From the Ice Age to the assasination of Olof Palme, Scott digs into every nook and cranny of Sweden's history. The account is blissfully more than political, though that is the backbone of the book. Besides hitting the military conquests, the great kings, etc. The farming life, the culture, the art, literature, and science of Sweden are also major points in this book, perhaps more aptly a history of the Swedish people, rather than just the nation's history.

Of course, Gustav II Adolph and the tragic Karl XII and the Great Northern War are probably the two greatest contributions of the Swedish people to the development of continental Europe, and they are dealt with very well in this book. But, the shoes of an Empire always too large for Sweden, the book reflects more on the progressive and peaceful transitions and compromises that have made Sweden's politics unique in the world, and more recently, almost a miracle. From the alliance of the monarch and the people against the nobility in the policy of land reduction which forever halted feudalism, to the age of freedom in which Sweden experimented with a bourgeoise liberalism, and finally through the gradual peaceful fall of plutocracy into democracy and the welfare state, Sweden has proved itself to be an iconoclast of domestic and foreign policy.

The author(s) *the 1986 revision contains an additional Epilogue* end on a probing discussion of the Welfare state. The great progressive achievement, they find, rests almost solely on the rich culture of Sweden, a conclusion one can hardly disagree with. A great portrait of a brilliant nation!