To Be, Not To Be Seen

The first comprehensive history of Swedish business in English — from the Swedish peasant pulling iron ore out of the bogs in prehistoric times to the Viking era, the Hanseatic League, the timber and mining age and the creation of the modern firms.

Sweden is known for fine products but its business community is little understood in other countries. This books explodes the worldwide misperception that Swedish business is state-run.

American journalist and author Jerry Hagstrom writes that Swedish business deserves its own special place in the history of world capitalism. Sweden, he says, rose to prosperity as the original export-driven small country economy — nearly 100 years before the Asian tigers were credited with that approach.

Mr. Hagstrom writes that Swedish companies have remained private throughout the Social Democratic era, that Swedish business is less government-controlled than in the rest of Europe and that Swedish business has more in common with U.S. business than with its neighbours.

Sweden's deep entrepreneurial instincts can be seen today, Mr. Hagstrom writes, in a new wave of high tech and information technology firms that make Sweden the most wired country in Europe and, by some accounts in the world.

• Introduction
• From Ice to Iron
  12,000 B.C. - A.D. 1721
• The Development of Freedom — Political and Economic
  1721-1867
• The Age of Entrepreneurship I: The Bankers and Their Spheres
  1856-1932
• The Age of Entrepreneurship II: Great Corporations and Founders
  1864-1932
• Challenge to Capitalism and the Saltsjöbaden Agreement
  1867-1938
• Swedish Modern — the Golden Years
  1933-1973
• Paradise on a Roller Coaster
  1971-1999
• The Empire and the Cottage — Sweden's Business Futuire
  

The book about how the Wallenberg-family came to dominate Sweden. Well-written, but a bit boring.