Big Blues is veteran Wall Street Journal reporter Paul Carroll's saga of the rise but mostly fall of the world's largest computer maker. However, this isn't actually about IBM; it's about IBM's microcomputer business, which is actually doing pretty well for itself lately. In fact the mainframe and minicomputer business contributed much more to the downfall of Big Blue.
Carroll states in his acknowledgements, "As you might guess, IBM didn't cooperate with this book." As you also might guess - after reading the book - Microsoft certainly did. Indeed, when you start reading, you could even get the idea it's about Microsoft. Bill Gates is mentioned in the first paragraph, quoted in the second, and dominates the next several. The book has lots of new and interesting details about the IBM/Microsoft relationship, but they're details that only Microsoft could have revealed.
Big Blues is full of juicy inside stories - told with gratuitous pulp-novel drama - but it fails to translate its insider's perspective into any real insights into the company and the people who drove it down. Carroll is an excellent reporter, but in a book, you want to understand where the author is coming from. Because Carroll doesn't provide his own interpretation, you wind up with the IBM story according to Microsoft.
The last chapter takes a particularly nasty turn, with IBM employees literally slashing their wrists because of this evil empire, which Carroll overdramatizes by saying things like "IBM has probably hurt more people than the problems of any company in history." All in all, the book has some great historical information that makes it worthwhile for industry buffs, but it ends up reading more like a book-length Journal article than a real book.
Big Blues: The Unmaking of IBM, by Paul Carroll, US$24.00. Crown Publishers: +1 (212) 254 1600.
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