The grandiose title and a three-person editorial team promise a magnum opus on some impressive topics. In fact, this volume is a collection of occasional papers originating in a summer school convened by Pirkko Koski in Suitia, Finland, in 1995, and two of the essays have been published elsewhere previously. The “international cast of scholars” touted in the publisher's blurb comprises five North Americans (one an expatriate), four Finns, and one Israeli. As in all such Festschriften, there is a certain imbalance and immiscibility, and some of the essays are only tenuously connected to the nexus announced in the title.