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Andrew Carnegie
David Nasaw
3.85
5,644 ratings320 reviews
A National Book Critics Circle Award-nominated biographer chronicles the life of the iconic business titan from his modest upbringing in mid-1800s Scotland through his rise to one of the world's richest men, offering insight into his work as a peace advocate and his motivations for giving away most of his fortune. 120,000 first printing.
GenresBiographyHistoryBusinessNonfictionAmerican HistoryAudiobookBiography Memoir
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896 pages, Hardcover
First published October 24, 2006
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David Nasaw19 books143 followers
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David Nasaw is an American author, biographer and historian who specializes in the cultural, social and business history of early 20th Century America. Nasaw is on the faculty of the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, where he is the Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. Professor of History.
In addition to writing numerous scholarly and popular books, he has written for publications such as the Columbia Journalism Review, American Historical Review, American Heritage, Dissent, The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Slate, The London Review of Books, and Condé Nast Traveler.
Nasaw has appeared in several documentaries, including The American Experience, 1996, and two episodes of the History Channel's April 2006 miniseries 10 Days That Unexpectedly Changed America: "The Homestead Strike" and "The Assassination of President McKinley". He is cited extensively in the US and British media as an expert on the history of popular entertainment and the news media, and as a critic of American philanthropy.
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Jan-Maat
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ReadFebruary 16, 2018
This is a solid biography that raises a crucial question that it never answers. As a result it has a very interesting subject but for the wrong reasons.
I will declare an interest. As a little lad every Saturday morning I'd shoulder my green satchel and set off to my nearest library to exchange my borrowed books. My nearest library then was the Lambeth Carnegie library since my legs were short then this still involved the long march down Fawnbrake Avenue pass the Monkey puzzle tree but since Nationalists didn't control the intersections during daylight hours it was safe enough at night perhaps the Kuomintang reestablished control over strategic waypoints on the path to the library - it was hard to know - at the time I'd have been in bed with the bed lamp on reading library booksendowed by the subject of this book and still standing in red brick and yellow stone although I think it is no longer a library but instead a contentious local issue and potentially on the way to becoming a gymnasium or something which for the classical Greeks would have been fine and appropriate no doubt . I'll come back to the libraries later.
The question is how did Carnegie get rich. If Carnegie is the embodiment of the American Dream this is important. The implication is, and apparently there is a lacuna in the evidence, that Carnegie was set up to be a sleeping partner in a railway company (obviously insider dealing was involved, this was the 19th century after all) and then took advantage of the capital/security this gave him. In other words to succeed you don't need hard work and application, you need someone to give you a handful of magic beans.
Carnegie was not a source of creativity in the steel industry as the book makes clear. Rather his access to capital was his competitive advantage - he was able to buy successful steelworks and subsidiary industries, buy expertise, buy patent security, buy political support for armaments projects that required steel and to break strikes. Hard work and application make a Frick (though he got shot for his efforts along the way). Magic beans however make you a titan of industry.
Clearly I benefited from Carnegie's philanthropy. However I can't help feeling that once you've accrued a certain amount of wealth that giving it away becomes a more interesting past time than accumulating more it particularly when giving it away involves asserting your superiority over other people and institutions, here I will point out that the cover features a very small man wearing a very tall hat. Local authorities had to ask Carnegie for the money for the capital investment to build the libraries, but in order to get it had to demonstrate that they would fund the running costs. By the late 1970s, early 1980s when I was going to the library I should think that what had been spent on the operating costs was comfortably in excess of the capital cost of construction. However this the story of a Plutocrat deciding how an elected authority should spend it's money. While I'm happy about the object of investment I'm disturbed at the principle. The power game seems apparent when relatively modest endowments at time of construction would have paid for maintenance, stock and staff, particularly as he was earning money faster through earned interest than he could give it away.
It is more troubling to think that the money was generated through the long working hours and low wages of his employees and that he didn't invest in libraries in those communities where possibly the children of those employees could have studied, improved themselves and escaped poverty or made more of a contribution to the economy. But then philanthropy is a form of conspicuous consumption, the potlatch winner.
Reading between the lines the nature of 19th century capitalism is clear - access to capital is everything. Being a cheery telegraph boy who looks as though he can keep his mouth shut doesn't hurt either.
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Chrissie
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April 14, 2017
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.
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Diane S ☔
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August 8, 2022
To be continued.
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Mikey B.
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November 3, 2015
I consumed this 800 page biography at home and while traveling in trains and planes. It’s a huge book on a character whose name we now associate mostly with a few buildings and charity foundations. It was a long slog to consume – but the main reason I managed to complete it is the wonderful and lucid writing of the author – David Nasaw. Throughout we are given a lively picture of the era and the personalities – from Andrew Carnegie, his mother, wife and daughter, his several business partners (such as Henry Clay Frick), and to the Presidents he sought to influence.
We follow Andrew Carnegie from a poor family that emigrated from Scotland to the U.S. (Pittsburgh) – and how he became a rich businessman – very rich. Overall I found him to be a quirky fellow. But he was no dour Scotsman – he was very talkative on a great range of subjects and was forever optimistic. He formed lasting friendships easily, mostly with men.
He had his mother live with him until she died in 1886, when he was 50 years old. Up to that time he had been pursuing, on and off, Louise Whitfield for several years. They finally married in 1887, she was 30 and he was 51. Their first and only child (Margaret) was born in 1897. Part of what I am trying to point out is that the guy, who was a millionaire several times over and would be quite ruthless in his business dealings – did not want to unsettle the relationship he had with his mother, by marrying the woman he loved.
Carnegie always seemed to be flying at a very high altitude above his factories - especially his iron and steel workers. He could not see the drudgery of their lives. He himself was very careful to not overwork himself – and was perpetually on vacations, whether in Europe or in the U.S. Carnegie was a traveling phenomenon - and crossed the Atlantic several times – and did one world tour. He was constantly advising his business associates of the importance of time off – and often would take them on his jaunts (all expenses paid for). But not his factory workers, who he kept on a 12 hour day, seven days a week. At one point the unions succeeded in getting an 8 hour day. Carnegie then proceeded to crush the unions – and it was back to lower salaries and a 12 hour day. Carnegie was no friend of the worker – but he was totally oblivious to this – thinking that he was beloved by them because he gave them employment.
Possibly he felt his donations, the building of libraries and philanthropies, made up for this. Many buildings, in Pittsburgh and New York, bare his name. The author does not explore the idea that Carnegie sought to immortalize himself through these grandiose structures. Many libraries in the U.S., Canada and the U.K. were started and funded by Carnegie. Interestingly he also believed that wealth should not be inherited – that it should be given away (or otherwise to be taxed by the government).
After he retired in the 1890’s (J.P. Morgan bought off his iron and steel companies) Andrew Carnegie became a tireless crusader for world peace. This is commendable. But like many business people who become involved in politics he overestimated his influence; perhaps not realizing that politicians would not behave like his salaried business partners. Presidents, like Teddy Roosevelt, became irritated of Carnegie’s sometimes fawning and other-times unstoppable flow of advice. Carnegie did not realize that he was being scorned and ridiculed behind his back. Mark Twain, a friend of Carnegie, also was given to caustic remarks.
The author gives a wide canvas – but as mentioned, the length is excessive.
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Steve
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February 25, 2020
https://thebestbiographies.com/2020/0...
“Andrew Carnegie” by Davis Nasaw was published in 2006 and was a finalist for the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for Biography. Nasaw is the Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. Professor of History at City University of New York. Among his most widely-read books are biographies of Joseph P.Kennedy (which I read and reviewed last year) and William Randolph Hearst.
The ideal biography requires several crucial ingredients. Among them are an intriguing biographical subject, a skilled writer, a robust supply of primary source material and an author capable of diligent and determined research. This scholarly and often gripping biography of Andrew Carnegie provides each of these items in abundance.
Using sources not available to earlier biographers, Nasaw skillfully stitches together a seamless and comprehensive narrative which explores his subject’s entire life. In these 801 pages of text, Nasaw paints an extraordinarily balanced and remarkably robust portrait of Carnegie…displaying his determination, financial acumen, personal passions, charitable predilections and his numerous faults and contradictions.
There is no consensus, however, as to whether Nasaw's biography surpassed Joseph Frazier Wall's 1970 classic as the definitive biography of Carnegie; at some point I will have to read the latter and decide for myself!
Among the book’s best features are its compelling introduction (one of the best I’ve ever encountered), a fascinating opening chapter which reviews Carnegie’s ancestry and chapters which recount his early years in Pittsburgh while working a variety of odd jobs. In addition, the description of Carnegie’s relationship with his future wife and as well as his relationships with Henry Clay Frick (a longtime business partner) and Herbert Spencer and Matthew Arnold (two English intellectuals) are excellent.
Like many irresistible biographical subjects, Carnegie’s personality is full of contradictions and the sharp contrast between the ruthless businessman and the famously generous and compassionate philanthropist is well articulated. In general, it often appears that Nasaw was able to uncover every interesting tidbit of Carnegie’s long and spirited life.
But for all its merit, this biography is not perfect. Many readers will find the book too lengthy and inconsistently engaging. It often seems as though Nasaw was reluctant to filter out mind-numbing minutiae in an attempt to leave no doubt this must be the definitive – and exhaustive – account of Carnegie’s life. In addition, the considerable focus on his non-business efforts (most notably his retirement-era crusade for world peace) feels overdone.
Overall, David Nasaw’s “Andrew Carnegie” is a remarkably detailed and often extremely interesting account of the life of a Scottish-American immigrant and capitalist who was likely the richest man in the world when he retired. Readers seeking swift and effortless tales of capitalist adventure will find the book too detailed and occasionally tedious. But for anyone who enjoys good writing underpinned by a fascinating subject and exceptional research…this book is likely to prove extraordinary.
Overall rating: 4¼ stars
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Carl Rollyson
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August 23, 2012
Why did Andrew Carnegie give away all of his money? This is the question that Carnegie's biographers have to confront. David Nasaw's authoritative new biography goes a long way toward answering the question, even if he cannot—perhaps no biographer can—ultimately fathom Carnegie's complex motives and temperament.
Mr. Nasaw deftly dismisses the conventional explanations. Carnegie did not feel guilty about accumulating a vast fortune. He did not feel he had earned his wealth immorally, let alone illegally. J.P. Morgan's claim that Carnegie became the richest man in the world when he sold his steel corporation to Morgan did not embarrass Carnegie a bit. Carnegie did not build his famous public libraries or establish his endowments for peace and social welfare as public relations ploys. Long before he became a controversial public figure, during a period when he was regarded as a pro-union supporter of the workingman and a rebuke to the robber barons of the Gilded Age, he had resolved to divest himself of his capital.
Mr. Nasaw's probes Carnegie's personality and philosophy — which Carnegie wrote up as "The Gospel of Wealth" — to describe an individual who believed he owed his good fortune to his community, a key term in the Carnegian lexicon. Unlike many self-made men (Carnegie was the son of a feckless Scottish weaver), he did not claim he had succeeded through hard work and genius. Carnegie scoffed at businessmen who put in 10- and 12-hour days. Even at the height of his involvement in business, Carnegie rarely spent a full day in his office. He disliked the go-getter mentality and counseled his fellow Americans to make opportunities for leisure. Carnegie loved to travel, read, attend the theater, and generally absorb culture, which he regarded not as a frill but as a necessity.
Carnegie headed for the country's cultural capital, New York City, as soon as he could break away from commitments in Pittsburgh, where he had begun his rise as a messenger boy and telegraph operator before graduating to Pennsylvania railroad executive positions. Pittsburgh had set him up to sell bonds and form partnerships in the iron and steel industries based on insider trading (not yet designated a crime or even considered immoral). What Mr. Nasaw dubs "crony capitalism" formed the basis of Carnegie's success.
But the ebullient Carnegie — one associate called him the happiest man he had ever met — had literary aspirations and quoted Shakespeare liberally. He befriended influential figures like Matthew Arnold and William Gladstone, not to mention the man who became his philosophical mentor, Herbert Spencer. Indeed, Spencer and Shakespeare went hand in hand for Carnegie to the point that he could close a deal quoting either writer.
Herbert Spencer, Mr. Nasaw believes, is the key to Carnegie's decision to give away his money. Spencer believed in evolutionary progress and that the "apogee of human achievement was industrial society," Mr. Nasaw writes. "What counted most for Carnegie was not simply that Spencer had decreed that evolutionary progress was inevitable and industrial society an improvement on its forbears, but that this progress was moral as well as material." Businessmen like Carnegie were not the creators of this progress but its agents. They arose out of the community that fostered their efforts.
In Carnegie's view, Spencer was not merely presenting ideas. For him, Spencer's notions were laws, and so in "The Gospel of Wealth," Carnegie refers to the "Law of Accumulation of Wealth" and the "Law of Competition." In this positivist reading of history, Carnegie met the world head-on — very much as he does in the evocative photograph on the cover of Mr. Nasaw's biography. Carnegie is shown walking toward us, open to whatever experience has to teach him. Naturally, then, he argued that he should give back what the world had, in effect, bestowed upon him. So certain was Carnegie that great wealth must be redistributed that he even argued against the notion of inheritance for children of the wealthy. Let them, as well, meet the world head-on.
With so much empathy for his community, then, how could Carnegie have consorted with Henry Clay Frick, a notorious and brutal strikebreaker? Unions, Carnegie concluded, did not understand that the Spencerian world, had periods of downs as well as ups—as Mr. Nasaw's illustrates in his redaction of the philosopher:
"It seems hard than an unskillfulness which with all his efforts he cannot overcome, should entail hunger upon the artisan," Herbert Spencer had written, almost as if he were advising Carnegie not to give in to the demands of employees. "It seems hard that a labourer incapacitated by sickness from competing with his stronger fellows, should have to bear the resulting privations. It seems hard that widows and orphans should be left to struggle for life or death. Nevertheless, when regarded not separately, but in connection with the interests of universal humanity, these harsh fatalities are seen to be full of the highest beneficence.
Or as Carnegie himself notes in the social Darwinist "The Gospel of Wealth" (included in a new Penguin paperback edited by Mr. Nasaw): "While the law may be sometimes hard for the individual, it is best for the race, because it insures the survival of the fittest in every department." As you may already have gathered, Carnegie was a better stylist than Spencer.
But a mystery remains in the heart of Andrew Carnegie's heart. When he published "Triumphant Democracy," which essentially ignored the terrible suffering that Spencer's version of evolutionary progress entailed, Spencer himself wrote Carnegie: "Great as may be hereafter the advantages of enormous progress America makes, I hold that the existing generations of Americans, and those to come for a long time hence, are and will be essentially sacrificed." What did Carnegie say to that? Mr. Nasaw does not comment, except to say, "What mattered most was that he be taken seriously as a thinker and author."
In other words, Mr. Nasaw does not know what Carnegie thought of Spencer's rebuke. Instead of just shilling for capitalism, shouldn't Carnegie have explored its devastating consequences as well? Failure to do so deprived Carnegie of the very status of literary figure and thinker he craved.
Didn't Carnegie understand as much? And shouldn't Mr. Nasaw probe this fatal flaw? Instead, he writes that Carnegie "wore his many hats well." So he did, when he looked in his own mirror. But biography ought to reflect perspectives not available to the subject. Even where evidence is lacking, some rather sharp questions have to be asked of a subject who did so much good while refusing to acknowledge that it arose out of so much questionable philosophy.
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Joseph Sciuto
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June 17, 2020
Back in the late 1970's while attending John Jay college of Criminal Justice I would have dinner every Friday night at this great little restaurant on 57th street and Park Ave. I always ordered the London Broil, which was simply the best, a couple of beers (back in 1978 in was legal to drink at eighteen, not that it would have stopped me either way) and after leaving a great tip, 3 dollars on a 7 dollar bill, I would walk across the street and look at the coming events at "Carnegie Hall," not that I could afford to go to any event but I did love looking and walking around this magnificant building.
After moving to California in the early eighties, I always remembered fondly the little restaurant with the wonderful London Broil... So much so that I brought my lovely wife there a few times while visiting New York, but never did I think of going across the street to "Carnegie Hall." Strange, because by that time I could have afforded tickets. In fact, I never even thought about "Carnegie Hall," or the man responsible for building the music hall, Andrew Carnegie, until some forty years later when I read David McCullough's "The Johnstown Flood" and Mr. Carnegie and his Steel company were mentioned in the book.
It was after reading Mr. McCullough's book that I decided to pick up the highly praised, extremely large biography named "Andrew Carnegie" by David Nasaw. To say that Mr. Carnegie was different, would be an understatement. At one point in his life he was considered the "richest man" in the world... The Steel business and a few shady deals paid really well.
To say that Mr. Carnegie was generous would be a large exaggeration. At the time of his death, he would have given away what would amount to the fortunes of Bill Gates and Jeff Bezo's combined. And who are those that benefitted from his largess: Libraries, he built over two thousand across the United States and the world... Museums, Schools, Music halls, Convention Centers, The Carnegie Foundation for World Peace, The Carnegie Foundation for Scientific Research, The Mount Wilson Observatory... And the list just keeps going on and on.
Mr. Carnegie's goal in life, after accumulating a massive fortune, was to give it all away before he died, and for the most part he did. He was far from a perfect man. In fact, the men that worked in his Steel Mills might not be very kind in their appraisal of the man.
Yet, his imprint on American and world cultures, his pursuit of world peace, and his relationships with Presidents of the United States makes him one of the most influential, if not controversial figures, of the last 150 years.
Joseph Conrad wrote, "That we go through life with eyes half closed," and in the case of Andrew Carnegie I passed through six decades with eyes fully closed because I have passed many of his cultural and scientific Institution that he had built and didn't take notice, which is amazing because they're everywhere.
I STRONGLY RECOMMEND this book.
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Richard
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February 24, 2007
I rarely read anything that's not about early 19th Century, but, on a whim, I bought this recent biography about Andrew Carnegie;philanthropist, steel king and robber baron.
Carnegie was the proto-typical "poor boy made good" and was one of the richest men in the world. and he was a true conundrum; filthy rich, yet he thought it was his duty to give away as much as he could before he died to philanthropic causes. and, even though he did give away millions to those less fortunate, he had a general disdain for the poor, even those who wored in his steel mills!
This is a well written book! I came away with mixed feelings about Carnegie; I liked him but I also was disgusted by him.
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