In Viking Economics: How the Scandinavians Got It Right-and How We Can, Too a retired Swarthmore College professor who has lived and worked in Norway tells an uplifting story. What economists call "the Nordic model" puts Denmark, Iceland, Norway and Sweden at the top tier of international ratings. That includes education, abundance of jobs, health care, and security for all people. Only Norway found substantial oil. All four Nordics were nimble in bouncing back from the 2008 crisis that still bedevils Europe and the U.S.

The book tells a human story: what is it like to be a professional in Norway, or a parent or student or worker or entrepreneur or farmer or retired person or immigrant? The reader will meet people from many walks of life, even the author's Norwegian family of in-laws.

Nordic societies are not utopian. Racial and ethnic diversity challenges them. Women have not fully broken the "glass ceiling," although they have 40% of corporate board seats and give significant political leadership. For brief periods Swedes, Icelanders, and Norwegians did de-regulate their financial sectors, with disastrous consequences that forced them back to their Nordic model. The book tells the dramatic story of how they waged their own struggles for democracy and freedom, and opened the space to create a model that others learn from.

George Lakey recently retired from Swarthmore College where he was Eugene M. Lang Visiting Professor for Issues in Social Change and managed the Global Nonviolent Action Database research project (nvdatabase.swarthmore.edu). Each of his nine books has been about change and how to get it. In 2010 he was named the Peace Educator of the Year in 2010 by the Peace and Justice Studies Association. He has received the Martin Luther King, Jr., Peace Award, the Paul Robeson Social Justice Award, the Ashley Montague Conflict Resolution Award, and the Giraffe Award for Sticking his Neck out for the Common Good.

George is a Quaker, a gay man with four great-grandchildren, and plays Broadway tunes for sing-alongs. His first arrest was for a civil rights sit-in, he has served as an unarmed bodyguard for human rights defenders in Sri Lanka, and recently walked 200 miles in a successful campaign against mountaintop removal coal mining in Appalachia. He has led over 1500 social change workshops on five continents. He co-founded a number of social change organizations including Training for Change and, most recently, Earth Quaker Action Team (EQAT.org).