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Juha Seppala's "History of Finland" will not trick library cataloguers into misclassification, if they but look inside; it consists of an introduction and three sets of reflections on disparate figures and layers of Finland's past and present. The overture, "Mato lampi" (Worm Pond), plays with the vagaries of Finnish genealogy and nomenclature (and-real or made-up-the author's family), and on the forest, water, and bog origin of a very large segment of Finland's population: "Bright sun of September, the strong and a little soui-ish taste of swamp water. The pond as source." "Emperors and Kings" is a phantasmagoria of actors and scenes: the brutal and drunken Ingrian commander of the police detail at the funeral of Engen Schauman, the assassin of Governor-General Bobrikov; the hard lot of the sculptor Johannes Takanen; emigrants to America; the...