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.

Jerry Hagstrom is a contributing editor of National Journal in Washington D.C.

Utgiven av George Washington University
Distribueras av Timbro i Sverige