The narrative arc of Francis Sejersted's book is one that is familiar to many scholars of Scandinavian social democracy. The political fortunes of the Norwegian and Swedish Social Democrats are presented in three acts: the first decades of the twentieth century, in which the two parties reject Marxism and ultimately form crucial pacts with both farming and capital in response to the economic crisis of the 1930s; a golden age of social democracy, from shortly after World War II until the end of the 1960s, in which the two parties effectively managed capitalism while simultaneously implementing a broad array of policies intended to foster greater equality of outcome; and the 1970s to the present, in which the hegemony of Norwegian and Swedish social democracy has been greatly diminished, and in which the two parties have been left programmatically uncertain in the face of new political and economic challenges, both at home and abroad. Drawing upon an extensive array of research from both the social sciences and humanities, Sejersted delivers an account that is almost encyclopedic in terms of the topics reviewed, and one that is likely to become regularly consulted by those seeking a primer in the history of Scandinavian social democracy. It will be, quite simply, the go-to book on the topic.