Estonia and the Estonians Book

Knowing little about the grander history of the Baltic area, I was surprised to read: "For the sake on convenience, the term Estonia is used in discussing earlier historical periods although, strictly speaking, no such entity existed before the twentieth century." I had the most peripheral knowledge that Germany, Russia, and Sweden dominated the area of land now called Estonia, but I must have thought Estonia would have had its own Henry (like England) or Louis (like France), whether they were disasters, authoritarians, or bunglers. It seems that before the break-up of the USSR, Estonia's history is simply the tabloid history the bully-empiricism of Germany, Sweden, Russia, and, of course, the ever-so-Christian Livonian Knights. Shame on them, all of them. And shame on all modern empires. Stealing indigenous people's land and relegating them to servitude? Sinful.

The book is VERY factoid oriented: lots of dates, quantities, economics. It is obviously well researched and objective; far more than I am and I am not even Estonian in ancestry! I hate to say it, but the book is "dry" and took a lot of concentration to remember names and places and organizations; perhaps because I am not used to so many repeating vowels together in words. :)

The part on WW2 was the most gut-wrenching. I would not want to have to choose between Nazi domination, (false) Communist domination by the Soviets, or death. Estonia's history is NOW its own, and hopefully it will shine brighter than their previous "masters".