When I was in college, a friend gave me London's The Iron Heel. Put it down maybe half way through because I thought it a diatribe and implausible. 50 years later reading bio's like this, Rockefeller, LBJ and Morgan - Pinkertons, 'weapons of mass financial destruction' - makes you wonder why everyone is not voting for Bernie. You can understand why McClure's and Tarbell were so popular. Charming, ruthless, self centered. Destroy your job, destroy your neighborhood and then gracious enough to build a library.

Amazed at all the journals and letters revived and preserved. Long read but I can feel like I ve known this person and his character after the read. Portrays a very human like figure despite his magnate achievements. From impoverished immigrant uneducated beginnings to genius wealthiest Titan, with an unidentified source of ability to flick a switch- opinionated yet emotionally aware, unswayable, and ability to strategically executed swiftly with reason and foresight logic. Almost a self thought grandmaster chess player in business. So much information and raises a lot of questions about his thinking process, but results is in the pudding. So many issues and constant problems thru his business, but when retired and worry free he slumped into slight depression, evident that problems are a sign of life. Wonderful I thought, so glad I picked it up.

I am certainly glad to have read this book. I had no idea that I would come to first loathe the man and then pity him. Read the book and find out why.

Andrew Carnegie (1835 – 1919) was born in Dunfermline, Scotland. His father, a weaver made jobless by industrialization, moved the entire family to Allegheny, Pennsylvania, USA, in 1848. The father having little ambition and the family meagre income, Andrew, being the oldest son, began work as a bobbin boy. He worked his way up to telegraph messenger, then telegraph operator. Both Andrew and his mother had higher visions and plans. We follow his path year by year. Self-made, he became a steel tycoon and robber baron, a man of letters and at the age of 66 after retiring Andrew had become the world’s wealthiest man. Following the doctrine of philosopher Herbert Spencer, he dedicated the remaining years of his life to philanthropy and peace.

As steel tycoon he was ruthless and pushed his men to the utmost, showing no compassion or understanding for workers. His goal in life to make as much money as possible so he could return it to the poor is blind to the fact that what a worker wants is not a gift or an endowment or access to a library, but decent wages enabling adequate living standards! While others are slaving away, he (Andrew) who is so intelligent, clever and wise worked only a few hours a day! He traveled, entertained, owned sumptuous houses and accoutrements, read, wrote and gave speeches lecturing others on the proper way of living. He was so full of himself, self-satisfied, ebullient and jocular, but totally unaware of the fact that he was a total pain in the butt to the dignitaries, presidents, and emperors whom he saw as his equals. His behavior is pitiful to observe! Pitiful also because his optimistic enthusiasm in support of arbitration and negotiation, for a League of Peace and a World Court fell on deaf ears. Not a soul was listening.

A hypocrite and an idealist. He adored adulation. This book shows you the whole man. We see what he does, how he acts and what he says, year by year. The chapters move forward chronologically a few years at a time. The research is thorough and not one-sided. At times the information included is excessive. Many quotes are provided both about Carnegie and by him. We lean about the man from how he expresses himself. The author does comment on the veracity of that said, but occasionally I would have appreciated further analysis.

On completion of the book there remain for me some questions. What was it that induced Carnegie while still young to give away his riches? We are referred to his ardent support of Herbert Spencer, but is that the whole explanation? I think he had an inner need to be looked up to, to be exalted and to be praised. What is the cause of this? Secondly, I wish Andrew’s relationship with his mother had been more thoroughly analyzed. He married in 1887 at the age of 52 and only after her death. What is the explanation for the hold she had on him?

The audiobook is narrated by Grover Gardner. I liked it a lot, so four stars. It is easy to follow and clear. He neither dramatizes nor uses separate intonations for family members or friends.

Andrew Carnegie Is not your normal person. We are all aware of his philanthropy but here is the man behind the deeds. It takes a while to read this book, and you are sure to get annoyed, but I think it is worth reading.

Unfortunately, I expected to learn much about business seeing as this is a biography about a 19th Century entrepreneur but it wasn't forthcoming. I guess I can't blame the author because Carnegie wore many hats and very much wanted to be remembered for much more than just his star-spangled business career. If anything, business seems to have fallen far down the list of his priorities his praiseworthy success notwithstanding.

This was a man of noble character as far as wealth stewardship is concerned. To give out to charity all his stupendous wealth in the course of his lifetime was a worthwhile goal. Wealth can be used as a force for good as much as it can be used for evil but it's good to see that Carnegie used it for the former. It is certain we brought nothing into this world and we'll leave with nothing into the next. The best use, then, of earthly wealth amassed is for the good of humanity in worthy causes that make the world a much better place.

why are all bios over 600 pages? is it REALLY necessary? Still, trudging along...
Okay, I finished, though I freely admit I skimmed many sections to get to the ones I was interested in. Here's how to make money in America, the Andrew Carnegie way. Work hard, ride the coattails of important people via toadying and then employ crony tactics with secret groups and coalitions until you have built a ginormous fortune. Luckily, he was just as interested in giving away his fortune as he was amassing it. and luckily he always loved books. So you can't be a hater.

I'd just finished reading Ron Chernow's biography of Rockefeller, so I figured this would be a good follow-up. I was right. What a fascinating life, filled with all the good and evil of which men are capable. Carnegie's was an amazing life, his later years of philanthropy making up in some ways for a cruel business career. I'd have hated to have worked in his factories. But one cannot deny his amazing accomplishments in the world of philanthropy, especially in the cause of peace. It was sad to read of his strenuous efforts to get something like a league of nations (he called it a league of peace) started before WWI broke out. Instead, the war broke Carnegie, who didn't live long enough to see the league of nations fail. He certainly knew how to live and what a life!

Alas, this book reminded me why I don't usually read biographies. Too many of them are simply a long, overly detailed recounting of facts about someone. The joys of storytelling and narrative are lost to research.

This is a very well-researched book with a somewhat cynical view of Carnegie (probably rightly so, but I did chafe at the author's obvious disdain for the man). That's all I've got to say.

I wanted to learn more about people from Scotland and I also wanted to know more about Andrew Carnegie so this was an interesting read for me. Carnegie was a native of Dunfermline in Fife. Unlike many immigrants, he kept a strong connection with his homeland and traveled extensively throughout his lifetime. He not only used his great wealth to endow many causes in North America but also endeavored to improve the land of his birth through philanthropy and social action.

First, I need to sound off about negative reviews written about biographies. I believe reviews of biographies should speak to the writing, research and overall quality of the book. The subject of the biography while one can criticize or make comments about their life, in no way should penalize the author’s efforts to tell their story. That being said, this book is a well researched and well written book. Carnegie was like many of his time, ambitious to pursue wealth and upward social mobility and respect.

To be continued.

Terrific bio of one of the key figures of America's post-Civil War industrialization and the Gilded Age -- and of no small parochial interest to a Pittsburgher. (Carnegie emigrated here with his family as a boy and made his name here before moving to New York in middle age, and plenty around here still bears his name, including the city's library system and largest museums.) Nasaw does a good job of revealing what made Carnegie tick -- his childhood of poverty, sure, but mostly the prodigious memory for facts and figures and perhaps most of all the sheer likability that so impressed the wealthy men who gave him opportunities at every turn until he made it himself. Nasaw is also good at illuminating Carnegie's self-justifying paradoxes: He was a "friend of the working man" until push came to shove, then he was a rapacious SOB -- but it was OK in his mind because he meant to give it all away, and thus make things better for the very people he was screwing. Fascinating stuff (and, whatever else he did, Carnegie did come quite close to giving it all away.) Unusual for any sort of bio, Nasaw spends precisely equal verbiage on every phase of Carnegie's life, including even his latter couple of decades, which he spent heavily on a quixotic mission to create lasting world peace, a doomed mission that caused him to die feeling himself a failure.

Carnegie wasn't a billionaire, but if you adjusted his wealth for inflation he would have been. It is my sincere belief that no person can amass such great wealth in anything like a moral fashion. This biography tells the story of how he got filthy rich, then spent much of his life giving away his fortune.

He was perhaps the greatest philanthropist of all time. Does such great charity compensate for the way his fortune was achieved? The book doesn't ask that question, let alone attempt to answer it.

This book is thorough and engaging, if perhaps a bit too long. My only critique is that the last quarter of it could have been much abbreviated without losing any substance. This last section details Carnegie's attempts to set up organizations for world peace. He failed miserably, repeatedly, and looked ridiculous to the world leaders he was in contact with. But with the rest of the book being so thorough, it might seem a bit out of the book's character to summarize the last few years of his life.

My book reviews aren't typically recaps of the story, but here I will give some spoilers:

Carnegie's fortune began with the Civil War, as a superintendent of the Pennsylvania Railroad. The railroad made exorbitant profits shipping soldiers and war material to the front. He moved into iron, then steel. He only invested when he had inside information, which would be illegal today.

He got into iron and steel to supply the expanding railroads. Initially, railroad bridges were wood and the rails were iron. Neither could withstand the wear and tear of heavy use, and all the bridges had to be replaced with iron and the rails with steel, particularly after the Civil War, which caused maintenance to be deferred. Through cross-ownership, railroads overpaid the construction companies, who overpaid for the steel and iron. Carnegie didn't engage in price-fixing to the extent that Rockefeller did, but he did use his monopoly power to dictate transportation rates. When he lacked monopoly power, his companies were in cartels (the "rail pool").

Carnegie felt it was the duty of millionaires to make as much money as possible, then give it all away before they died. He felt that, as a millionaire, he knew better what to do with the money than, say, his employees. Although he said that the employees should have their wages cut when the price of rails went down, he wasn't eager to raise their wages when rail prices rose. In fact, he invested in capital improvements that forced down the price of steel, thus reducing wages according to his "sliding scale" while his profits greatly increased, helped by protective tariffs.

He felt that strikers were criminals. He didn't give the order himself, but his right-hand man brought in the Pinkertons to break a strike at Homestead. Some workers were killed. His goal was to crush any union that operated in any of his plants. He felt that if he paid higher wages, even a "trifle more", his employees would only buy better food and clothing and it would mean that the people wouldn't be able to afford the bounties of progress. He didn't make the leap that Ford did: that by paying his employees more, they'd be able to buy his products. But, of course, his employees would never buy rails anyway.

Carnegie's "Gospel of Wealth" says that millionaires should give all their money away to help the community. The workers weren't as smart as the millionaires and would be better off by having low wages. Workers couldn't be trusted to help their own communities. That is, Carnegie felt (but never said out loud) that it was better for his employees to have large libraries/music halls/museums (built in rich neighborhoods, or New York, Scotland, or Fiji) than to be able to feed, clothe, and house their families. Why Carnegie felt it was the duty of Pittsburgh workers to help communities half a world away is unstated.

He didn't give away all his wealth, of course. He bought 40,000 acres in Scotland and built a hotel-sized castle there. His mansion in New York spanned two city blocks.

He was uneducated and spent much of his life wanting to become a man of letters. He used his status as the richest man alive to meet with world leaders. He loved to name-drop. He felt he was in a position to advise presidents (6 of them) and other leaders, who often ridiculed him behind his back.


I am both appalled and intrigued by these robber barons (Rockefeller, Carnegie, Morgan, Vanderbilt, Gould, etc). I already read a Rockefeller bio, and will read some others. Carnegie wasn't as bad as either Rockefeller, but it's not a high bar, IMO.