A New York Times bestseller! “Beautifully crafted and fun to read.” —Louis Galambos, The Wall Street Journal “Nasaw’s research is extraordinary.” —San Francisco Chronicle “Make no mistake: David Nasaw has produced the most thorough, accurate and authoritative biography of Carnegie to date.” —Salon.com The definitive account of the life of Andrew Carnegie 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 With a trove of new material—unpublished chapters of Carnegie's Autobiography; personal letters between Carnegie and his future wife, Louise, and other family members; his prenuptial agreement;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 fascinating and complex man, deftly placing his life in cultural and political context as only a master storyteller can.

Chronicles the rags-to-riches tale of a Scottish immigrant who used most of the millions he earned as a steel tycoon to set up a fund for the advancement of science, education, and peace.

Examines the life and career of Andrew Carnegie, the Scottish immigrant who made his fortune in the steel industry and used much of it for philanthropic causes.

Andrew Carnegie was a Scottish immigrant who rose from humble roots to become one of the most powerful and wealthy businessmen in the United States, with a steel empire that dwarfed all its competitors. Highlighting Carnegie's determination to succeed, author Zachary Kent shows how Carnegie, after becoming one of the wealthiest men in the world, gave away most of his fortune to philanthropic causes, building libraries and such famous landmarks as Carnegie Hall in New York City.

Andrew Carnegie was a leading industrialist who used his fortune to create a legacy of philanthropy and peace advocacy. This biography examines his rise from a poverty-stricken childhood to a position of international leadership.

This masterful biography of a giant of American industry--the first full life of Andrew Carnegie in more than a generation--triumphantly reveals every aspect of the man's complex personality and fabulous career. So varied were Carnegie's activities in industry, politics, education, philanthropy, and pacificism that his life encompasses much of the general history of the United States and of Great Britain down to the outbreak of World War I. Wall is particularly successful in capturing the excitement of America's dynamic period of business expansion in the generation after the Civil War. Carnegie the man remains at the center of the book--impulsive, haughty, idealistic, warm, loyal, and shrewd--and the drama of his life from telegraph boy to millionaire philanthropist is emphasized. His Scottish background is thoroughly investigated: Wall is concerned throughout with Carnegie's attempts to reconcile his spectacular business success and position in the American plutocracy with the egalitarian and Radical Chartist ideas of his family and youth. Carnegie's letterbooks and early business files, in the possession of the United States Steel Corporation and until now inaccessible to historians, were made available to the author. This vital and valuable collection of records is unsurpassed in its revelation of how Carnegie's own corporations operated, and also as an actual example of the development of a great American industry. Wall also consulted the huge collection of Carnegie material in the Library of Congress and the papers of Carnegie's business secretary, Robert Franks. Carnegie's daughter, Mrs. Roswell Miller, was kind enough to allow Wall to read the private correspondence between Andrew Carnegie and his wife Louise, also not previously available to scholars. The epic, highly-charged relationship between Carnegie and Henry Clay Frick emerges brilliantly, and the story of Carnegie's ventures in oil, railroad building and financing, bridge building, telegraphy, and iron and steel is clearly and fully presented. The book gives place also to a myriad of fascinating figures in America and Europe, including William Gladstone, Matthew Arnold, and Herbert Spencer in England, and J.P. Morgan, George Pullman, Mark Twain, William Jennings Bryan, Booker T. Washington, and Presidents Lincoln, McKinley, Theodore Roosevelt, and Wilson in America. It has much to say also about the impact of the Civil War on American industrialism, industrial statesmen and robber barons, and the influence of Social Darwinism on the business community. This rounded, honest biography, while compassionate, does not hesitate to call Carnegie to task for some of his financial dealings, his often arbitrary personal relationships and his occasional hypocrisy, or to show him at his worst-when dealing with the tragic Homestead strike of 1892. But the reader takes from the book a full understanding of why to many Americans Carnegie's death meant the end of an era in American history.

Andrew Carnegie (1835–1922) was a mass of contradictions: a radical Chartist who became a rabid capitalist, an idealist who was also a profound cynic, a committed pacifist who also played a crucial role in the opening part of the American Civil War, and a ladies’ man who had to wait until his fifties (after his domineering mother died) before forming a meaningful relationship with a woman. From bobbin boy in a Pittsburgh factory he progressed to messenger boy, telegraphist and railway superintendent. His meteoric rise owed much to his boss, Thomas Scott, who also cut the young Carnegie in on his first lucrative share deal. The youth who earned thirty-five dollars a month was on the road to his first million within a year or two, and he never looked back. Speculation in rolling-stock and railways, the nascent oil industry, iron and, above all, steel made Carnegie the richest man in the world. Along the way he created fortunes for many others, but trampled on friend and foe alike in his relentless pursuit of money. Then, the man who amassed the largest fortune in the world proceeded to give most of it away. From free libraries to world peace, the Carnegie millions were pumped into a host of worthy causes. The Peace Palace at the Hague is the lasting legacy of this global philanthropy; but Carnegie’s faith in the Kaiser to achieve world peace was shattered by the outbreak of the First World War, and it was a setback from which he never recovered. This candid and penetrating biography follows Carnegie from his humble birthplace in Dunfermline to the squalor of Allegheny City and Pittsburgh in the 1840s, and charts his dramatic rise to fame and fortune. Set against the contrasting backdrops of radical Scotland and America during the most turbulent phase of its development, Little Boss is the definitive story of one of the world’s greatest captains of industry.

Readers will be introduced to Andrew Carnegie and his rise from impoverished immigrant to one of the world's wealthiest industrialists. Learn how this self-made master of the American steel industry put his leadership, determination, and wealth to good use by building libraries, schools, and universities that continue to benefit people today.

Discusses the life of the self-made millionaire who made his fortune in the steel industry and is remembered for his generous donations that built libraries, universities, and research facilities.

This is the autobiography by the richest man of his time, after Rockfeller, who donated most of his fortune to establish schools and universities in many countries.