Andrew Carnegie

Category: Biography

Publishing Information: 2006 by Penguin Press

ISBN: 1-59420-104-8

Binding: cloth

Description: Majestically told and based on materials not available to any ì previous biographer, the definitive life of Andrew Carnegie-one ì of American business's most iconic and elusive titans-by the ì bestselling author of The Chief: The Life of William Randolph ì Hearst.

Celebrated historian David Nasaw, whom The New York Times Book ì Review has called "a meticulous researcher and a cool analyst," ì brings new life to the story of one of America's most famous and ì successful businessmen and philanthropists- in what will prove to ì be the biography of the season.

Born of modest origins in Scotland in 1835, Andrew Carnegie is ì best known as the founder of Carnegie Steel. His rags to riches ì story has never been told as dramatically and vividly as in ì Nasaw's new biography. Carnegie, the son of an impoverished linen ì weaver, moved to Pittsburgh at the age of thirteen. The ì embodiment of the American dream, he pulled himself up from ì bobbin boy in a cotton factory to become the richest man in the ì world. He spent the rest of his life giving away the fortune he ì had accumulated and crusading for international peace. For all ì that he accomplished and came to represent to the American ì public-a wildly successful businessman and capitalist, a ì self-educated writer, peace activist, philanthropist, man of ì letters, lover of culture, and unabashed enthusiast for American ì democracy and capitalism-Carnegie has remained, to this day, an ì enigma.

Nasaw explains how Carnegie made his early fortune and what ì prompted him to give it all away, how he was drawn into the ì campaign first against American involvement in the ì Spanish-American War and then for international peace, and how he ì used his friendships with presidents and prime ministers to try ì to pull the world back from the brink of disaster.

With a trove of new material-unpublished chapters of Carnegie's ì Autobiography; personal letters between Carnegie and his future ì wife, Louise, and other family members; his prenuptial agreement; ì diaries of family and close friends; his applications for ì citizenship; his extensive correspondence with Henry Clay Frick; ì and dozens of private letters to and from presidents Grant, ì Cleveland, McKinley, Roosevelt, and British prime ministers ì Gladstone and Balfour, as well as friends Herbert Spencer, ì Matthew Arnold, and Mark Twain-Nasaw brilliantly plumbs the core ì of this facinating and complex man, deftly placing his life in ì cultural and political context as only a master storyteller can. ì

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