About the Author

James W. Cortada is Senior Research Fellow at the Charles Babbage Institute at the University of Minnesota and the author of Information and the Modern Corporation (MIT Press) and other books. He worked at IBM for thirty-eight years in sales, consulting, managerial, and research positions.

Reviews

[An] excellent and I am tempted to label definitive book.... The research and background context is amazing and the book is readable throughout.—Tyler Cowen, Marginal Revolution

A good read. It is engaging and replete with juicy tidbits. The detailed discussion about sales, arguably the firm's most influential function and its main source of competitiveness for much of the twentieth century, is the book's key contribution to the literature on IBM.—Nature

[IBM] touches but lightly on the history of technology and is written primarily with a readership of business historians and corporate professionals in mind. Cortada ascribes IBM's brand success more to its historical managerial outlook and sales culture than its engineering units.... Authoritative.—TIMES HIGHER EDUCATION

A behemoth of a book for a behemoth of a company.... Chronicles the century-plus long span of a company that once dominated American business. As a narrative history of a sprawling business, it succeeds, with Cortada weaving in more scholarly historiographical debates and analysis as relevant throughout the book. The book is massive and exhaustively researched.... An ambitious and well-executed narrative business history, and many different readers will find something of value in its many pages.—Information and Culture