Ingenjörerna

social advancement in Sweden. However, the focus on engineers also has its drawbacks. It may give a false image of the crucial role of ‘heroic inventors’ – even if Wetterberg emphasises that these inventors relied heavily on many colleagues and collaborators. It also foregrounds the producers of technology rather than its users. In the past decades, much research within the history of technology has focused on users and their often creative and unforeseen ways of using and developing technologies. Moreover, as most Swedish engineers have been and still are men, the book is largely a male story, while a focus also on users would have given women a more prominent role. Wetterberg is an excellent narrator and his book has many nice illustrations which make it very inviting to read. It has the potential to become a best seller like his earlier books. I believe it can serve well as a textbook at both university history departments and engineering schools, and maybe even as supplementary reading for ambitious high school students. Moreover, it may attract the interest of many of Sweden’s many professional engineers (Wetterberg presents the numbers: 300,000 Swedes have a higher technical education, of which 22% are women) as well as the ‘general public’. Finally, yet importantly, for the readers of this journal, it may be rewarding to read for Scandinavian historians as it gives a good introduction to much of the recent research.