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IBM: The Rise and Fall and Reinvention of a Global Icon. By James W. Cortada. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2019. xxii + 723 pp. Photographs, tables, figures, notes, index. Cloth, $45.00. ISBN: 9780262039444.
James Cortada, a professionally trained historian who worked for IBM for almost forty years, has written a comprehensive history of that firm. In addition to his insider experience, Cortada brings real scholarly expertise, having earlier produced a fine history of the data processing industry prior to computers, as well as other books and articles on related topics. To avoid corporate interference with the content of this new book, Cortada did not start working on it until he had retired from IBM. The good news is that he thereby avoided IBM's requirement that anyone working there obtain prior approval before publishing anything about the firm. The bad news is that as a former employee Cortada no longer had access to the IBM archives he had used in writing earlier books. He relied this time on the considerable amount of primary and secondary material on IBM currently available in the public domain and conversations with such key figures in the history of IBM as former CEOs Thomas Watson Jr. and Frank Cary.
Cortada writes from the perspective of someone who, in his words, “personally embraced IBM's optimistic corporate culture” and was “privileged to be one of those iconic … salesmen” (p. 620). His new book clearly shows both the strengths and weaknesses of that kind...