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Sales rank 221,652
Customers rating (based on 31 reviews)
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Majestically told and based on materials not available to any previous biographer, the definitive life of Andrew Carnegie-one of American business's most iconic and elusive titans-by the bestselling author of The Chief: The Life of William Randolph Hearst. Celebrated historian David Nasaw, whom The New York Times Book Review has called "a meticulous researcher and a cool analyst," brings new life to the story of one of America's most famous and successful businessmen and philanthropists- in what will prove to be the biography of the season. Born of modest origins in Scotland in 1835, Andrew Carnegie is best known as the founder of Carnegie Steel. His rags to riches story has never been told as dramatically and vividly as in Nasaw's new biography. Carnegie, the son of an impoverished linen weaver, moved to Pittsburgh at the age of thirteen. The embodiment of the American dream, he pulled himself up from bobbin boy in a cotton factory to become the richest man in the world. He spent the rest of his life giving away the fortune he had accumulated and crusading for international peace. For all that he accomplished and came to represent to the American public-a wildly successful businessman and capitalist, a self-educated writer, peace activist, philanthropist, man of letters, lover of culture, and unabashed enthusiast for American democracy and capitalism-Carnegie has remained, to this day, an enigma. Nasaw explains how Carnegie made his early fortune and what prompted him to give it all away, how he was drawn into the campaign first against American involvement in the Spanish-American War and then for international peace, and how he used his friendships with presidents and prime ministers to try to pull the world back from the brink of disaster. With a trove of new material-unpublished chapters of Carnegie's Autobiography; personal letters between Carnegie and his future wife, Louise, and other family members; his prenuptial agreement; diaries of family and close friends; his applications for citizenship; his extensive correspondence with Henry Clay Frick; and dozens of private letters to and from presidents Grant, Cleveland, McKinley, Roosevelt, and British prime ministers Gladstone and Balfour, as well as friends Herbert Spencer, Matthew Arnold, and Mark Twain-Nasaw brilliantly plumbs the core of this facinating and complex man, deftly placing his life in cultural and political context as only a master storyteller can.
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| Publisher | Penguin Press HC, The | | Release date | 10/2006 | | Availability | | | Edition | Hardcover |
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 Andrew Carnegie
I enjoyed the book very much. It was very detailed but well written and easy to read. The chapters were the right length that you could put the book down after one or two chapters and then pick right up the next time without worrying about continuity of the story line, etc.
Detailed, balanced and very readable
When it comes to history books, I tend towards the view that 'less is more' and have always favored concise treatments over long-winded, drawn out narratives. However Nasaw's excellent biography of Andrew Carnegie was an exception: despite being quite long and covering nearly every step of Carnegie's long and active life, this book never dragged at all and made for very engaging and instructive reading. Like all good biographers, Nasaw uses his subject to touch on many important developments of the 19th and early 20th century in business, technology and current affairs. He also gives a very balanced view of Carnegie, who he clearly admires greatly but also in whom he identifies many human foibles including egotism, self-deception and hypocrisy. In all, a fitting tribute to a man who personified America's great age of progress and optimism -- with all its contradictions.
 Fails to separate the wheat from the chaff
It is a tad difficult to understand the rave reviews this book received. Not that it is teribile, it is not. It is well-written, fair-minded, and abundently researched. But it is also overly long and in the end a rather pedestrian biography of a complicted and not pedestrian business man and philanthropist. It makes the reader do the work the writer should have done - separating the wheat from the chaff. What really made Carnegie so successful at accumulating capital? How did he manage to compartmentalize his life so effectively? How did he justify - to himself - such nasty business practices leaving his laboring employees so overworked and underpaid? Unfortunately even readers who make their way through this tome will still be left wondering.
 Waste of time.
I picked up this book hoping to learn how Carnegie earned his fortunes. I was deeply disappointed. One couldn't help but get the sense that the author loath Andre Carnegie. There's scarcely little about Carnegie's business dealing. And there's almost no detail about the business' profits and earnings. Such details where obviously available to David Nasaw as their existence were mentioned several times in the books, yet the author had intentionally left them out. One would be hard pressed to understand how the one time richest man in the world achieved what he did.
A large portion of the book was devoted to Carnegie's aspiration on the world stage and politics, which he is of little consequence. Relatively small portion of the book is about Carnegie the industrialist and financier. This is likely because the author is a Professor of history and probably knows little about the economy.
As the book was written in strict chronological order, all of Carnegie's life events are interlaced. The constant switching back and forth makes the story line difficult to follow. In the end, I have learned nothing useful from the book. Given that Carnegie was one of the most successful industrialist in history, this is a pity. In the end, I think David Nasaw may simply the wrong man for the job.
The Bill Gates of the Industrial Age
While Bill Gates created applications for computers, Andrew Carnegie's primary business contribution was producing rails for trains. Gates created the engine for the Information Age. Carnegie built the network of the Industrial Age.
Both men were intensively competitive, and each became the richest in the world. But unlike Gates, who was manor born, Carnegie was born in Scottish poverty. In many ways Carnegie was an unlikely titan, but he immigrated to the right place (Pittsburgh) at the right time (1848), and he literally stumbled upon an oil well (the foundation of his fortune).
Carnegie had the personality for the time. He was smart, energetic, charismatic, and at times ruthless. In the same breath he was also sentimental and kind to friends and family. He was both a proud American, and a loyal Anglophile. Laborers toiled dawn to dusk in his factories, yet his work hours were 10am to 1pm, M-F. He supported high tariffs and hard money, yet approved of violence to counteract labor unions. Business was his occupation, yet he yearned to be a respected writer. He was, in short, a complex person.
A simple set of business maxims guided Carnegie's investments. For one, he only invested in companies where he had insider knowledge, and he personally investigated each opportunity. He concentrated his capital in growing industries. He vowed to never invest in an individual, although he became heavily dependent on Henry Clay Frick in later years. He always invested with a group of trusted associates who owned a controlling interest, yet he delegated operational control to general mangers. And he focused on reducing cost, seeking volume over profit margin. A prodigious memory and an ability to calculate in his head aided his ventures.
From his initial oil well, he amplified his wealth by selling bonds to Europeans, and then expanded into iron, Bessemer steel, and finally rails. However, the business details are less interesting than the man is himself. Partly because for most of his career he ran his business interests remotely from New York City through letters. This remoteness aided in his objective decision making, but also let to the deadly confrontation on May Day at Haymarket Square and the destruction of his relationship with Frick.
Carnegie loved to socialize, travel, converse and talk of big ideas. This life of the mind started early on through his "Webster Literary Society" in Pittsburgh and continued as he traversed the salons and dining rooms of New York City and Europe. He was also a relentless optimist who believed that poverty was the best preperation for business because it led to independence at an early age. Since he did not marry until 50, he had plenty of time to pursue his gift of gab and hone his skills as a writer.
In his final years, Carnegie devoted himself to giving away his fortune. He endowed the Carnegie Foundation, built several music halls and 1649 public libraries. He lived up to his word and gave the bulk of his immense fortune; and here the comparison to Bill Gates comes full circle
(These are just a few of my gleanings from David Nasaw's thorough and masterful biography. This book is a page-turner, and I felt I knew the man by the end. I highly recommend it.)
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