In the second volume of his vivid history of the Swedes, Vilhelm Moberg brings his focus on the common people to bear on a period that included two dramatic revolts: the national insurrection under Engelbrekt and the last desperate attempt of the Smaland peasantry to retain their medieval liberties - a defiance bloodily crushed by King Gustav Vasa. Using a wide variety of local historical source materials, Moberg studies the ruthless monarch Vasa and his two tragic opponents: the psychopathic Christian II of Denmark and Nils Dracke, the leader of the Smalanders. Furthermore, he examines the enigmatic and wide appeal of the Swedish forest and investigates the origins of the Swedish hatred of Danes, which was implanted by propaganda through songs commissioned by Karl VIII's chancellery.Moberg's history has been widely hailed by the Swedish press as a masterpiece of popular history writing and has been an all-time best-seller in Swedish bookstores.

Vilhelm Moberg (1898-1972) was one of Sweden's greatest writers of the twentieth century and is well known for his remarkable The Emigrants (1949), a four-volume epic tale of Swedish immigration to America. Paul Britten Austin is a translator and historian.Gunnar Myrdal (1898-1987) was an acclaimed Swedish economist and politician. He won the Nobel Prize for economics in 1974.

"Moberg succeeds in building up a picture of the medieval tiller of the soil that is full of insights and presented with a compassion, an enthusiasm and a freshness."—Times Literary Supplement

"‘The history of Sweden is the history of her commons’—such is the motto and theme of this highly personal history of Sweden by its best-selling novelist."—Library Journal

"An absorbing narrative history. A humanistic observer, Moberg gracefully intermingles facts, informed suppositions and source references."—Booklist

— -