Wealth of Contrasts

350 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE up, Adler provides an intelligent and cogently argued study of the industrial interest-group politics. Unfortunately, that framework is no longer adequate. As a close reading ofits footnotes attests, Adler’s book rests largely on older secondary sources in Italian and English, supplemented by relatively little original archival research. The real difficulties lie, however, in his apparent failure to consult any histori­ cal scholarship that has appeared since the late 1970s, undermining the viability of the book’s analysis and the importance of its conclu­ sions. A wealth of new regional studies, for instance, has under­ scored the extreme diversity of Italy’s middle classes, calling into question Alder’s use of such broad concepts as a flawed bourgeoisie or a general bourgeois crisis in postwar Italy. Similarly, recent works on business enterprise elsewhere on the peninsula have exposed the inadequacy of relying on the industrial leadership in Turin as the basis for making sweeping generalizations about the liberal-techno­ cratic values of “Italian” industrialists. Such research has shown that in the early twentieth century many successful Italian capitalists be­ lieved that nationalist and corporatist programs were more “mod­ ern” than liberalism and provided more effective solutions to con­ flicts in industrial society. In light of the major rethinking of contemporary Italian history that has taken place in the past two decades, Adler’s book is something of an anachronism. Anthony L. Cardoza Dr. Cardoza, professor of history at Loyola University of Chicago, is the author of Agrarian Elites and Italian Fascism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982) and Aristocrats in Bourgeois Italy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997). Wealth of Contrasts: Nyegaard & Co.—A Norwegian Pharmaceutical Com­ pany, 1874-1985. By Rolv Petter Amdam and Knut Sogner. Oslo: Ad Notam Gyldendal, 1994. Pp. 258; illustrations, notes, bibliogra­ phy, index. The pharmaceutical industry remains an underresearched area of history, compared with other sectors of the economy. One reason for this relative silence is that the production of pharmaceuticals is commonly lumped together with the chemical industry, and the fac­ tors making the sector a dynamic one in its own right have not been fully explored. Another reason is the slow process of opening up corporate archives. The publication of company histories often con­ stitutes the first stage in this process, leaving historians with little choice but to rely on these as their main source material. Rolv Petter Amdam and Knut Sogner’s history ofthe Norwegian pharmaceutical company Nyegaard and Company provides us with a well-researched and thorough account of one of the success stories of twentiethcentury industry, in a country that might be considered on the pe­ TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 351 riphery of mainstream industrial development. As such, it offers a welcome alternative to the German and American models, which have received the greatest attention in the literature on technologi­ cal change and industrial growth. Amdam and Sogner’s book was commissioned by the Hafslund Nycomed Corporation. In 1985, the corporation purchased Actinor, which included the pharmaceutical company Nyegaard and Com­ pany, and subsequently defined pharmaceuticals as its main area of industrial growth. This history of Nyegaard and Company spans the period from 1874 to 1985, which saw the transformation of the com­ pany from a small sales agency to a pharmaceutical producer of in­ ternational importance. This transformation was the result of the firm’s emphasis on research, which until the 1960s distinguished it from the rest ofNorwegian industry. The authors emphasize the role of management in shaping the business culture of Nyegaard and Company, describing it in terms of individuals as well as administra­ tions. The decision to opt for a research-led strategy, initially em­ ployed to imitate imported drugs but later used in an extensive pro­ gram of innovation, gave the firm the technological lead and the commercial advantage necessary to break into the international market. This evolution is described in three sections, each introduced by a clear summary. Part 1 describes the growth of the pharmaceutical company between 1874 and 1940. Part 2 presents the mobilization of the firm’s research capabilities, which resulted in the develop­ ment ofAmipaque, a nonionic x-ray contrast agent, in 1969. Part 3

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