Review by Choice Review
The emergence of an industrial capitalistic society in the US is an interesting and multifaceted story, and like most notable stories, has nuances of both laudable and contemptible actions and personalities. As this comprehensive and scholarly biography demonstrates, one of the most compelling personalities of America's Gilded Age was Andrew Carnegie. For better or worse, whether reality or myth, Carnegie was then and remains now an icon of both the achievements and excesses of American business. Rather than oversimplify Carnegie, Nasaw (history, City University of New York) has written a careful and evenhanded examination not only of Carnegie as a person but also of the circumstances and consequences of his actions and choices. This accomplished biography provides substance and insight from an array of letters, papers, and archival materials. Nasaw details Carnegie's rise from immigrant factory hand to telegraph messenger, railroader, iron maker, and bridge builder to become one of the world's wealthiest capitalists and most prominent philanthropists; he also describes his private life and driving resolve to be acknowledged as a man of letters who influenced public policy and world events. This discerning biography will educate and entertain both general and specialized readers. ^BSumming Up: Highly recommended. General readers; students, lower-division undergraduate and up; faculty and researchers T. E. Sullivan Towson University
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Booklist Review
In the pantheon of the industrial giants who dominated late-nineteenth-century American capitalism, Andrew Carnegie has consistently stood out as the most fascinating and enigmatic character. Celebrated as the creator of the modern steel industry, he earned equal renown for the disbursement of his vast fortune to numerous philanthropic causes. As opposed to the cold, austere image of a Rockefeller, Carnegie seemed to radiate genuine warmth and compassion. Nasaw, a prizewinning historian and biographer, has attempted to plumb the seemingly contradictory aspects of Carnegie's personality in a comprehensive and often engrossing biography. Nasaw has opted for a straight chronological narrative, beginning with Carnegie's youth in a struggling family of weavers in Dunfermline, Scotland. He proceeds to describe his inexorable rise to prominence after his emigration from Scotland to Pennsylvania, while seamlessly integrating Carnegie's personal story with the broader account of the explosion of big business. At times, Nasaw's effort to provide detail after detail bogs down the narrative. Still, the story is generally compelling. Ultimately, Nasaw cannot fully explain the man's contradictions, but this is a worthy attempt and an important examination of the man and his times. --Jay Freeman Copyright 2006 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Without education or contacts, Andrew Carnegie rose from poverty to become the richest person in the world, mostly while working three hours a day in comfortable surroundings far from his factories. Having decided while relatively young and poor to give all his money away in his lifetime, he embraced philanthropy with the same energy and creativity as he did making money. He wrote influential books, became a significant political force and spent his last years working tirelessly for world peace. Yet he was a true robber baron, a ruthless and hypocritical strikebreaker who made much of his money through practices since outlawed. Nasaw, who won a Bancroft Prize for The Chief, a bio of William Randolph Hearst, has uncovered important new material among Carnegie's papers and letters written to others, but comes no closer than previous biographers to explaining how such an ordinary-seeming person could achieve so much and embody such contradictions. He concentrates on the private man, including Carnegie's relations with his mother and wife, and his extensive self-education through reading and correspondence. His business and political dealings are described mostly indirectly, through letters to managers, congressional testimony and articles. Nasaw makes some sense out of the contradictions, but describes a man who seems too small to play the public role. While Peter Krass's Carnegie and Carnegie's own autobiography are more exciting to read and do more to explain his place in history, they also leave the man an enigma. 32 pages of photos. (Oct. 24) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
This concisely titled but weighty tome from CUNY historian Nasaw (The Chief: The Life of William Randolph Hearst) adds a new century's insight into a figure whom we all thought we knew so well. Drawing on unpublished chapters of the industrialist/philanthropist's Autobiography, his associates' diaries, and his correspondence, Nasaw nimbly uses the trajectory of Carnegie's familiar rags-to-riches story as a framework upon which to analyze this self-educated, intellectually curious, and always ambitious dynamo's progress toward initiatives promoting reading, culture, and international peace. He also scrupulously authenticates or discounts legendary stories related in the Autobiography. Nasaw's clearly written book on a man who deftly moved from the old moral sensibilities of his native Scotland to the new capitalist political economy of America speaks directly to the reader and offers more than James T. Baker's Andrew Carnegie: Robber Baron as American Hero and Peter Krass's Carnegie. The study of a prodigious presence on the world stage, vigorous and optimistic until World War I sapped his faith in the future, this work is well positioned to earn a valuable place on the shelves of academic and public libraries as well as those of professional historians.-Frederick J. Augustyn Jr., Library of Congress (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
Robber baron? Capitalist butcher? Angel? Industrialist-philanthropist Andrew Carnegie has been many things to many people, and in this grand biography, he's all of them. Warren Buffett's recent decision to give most of his $30-billion-plus fortune to charity squares neatly with Carnegie's view that it is a mark of shame to die with money in the bank; in that matter, but not alone, Nasaw's overstuffed and very well-written biography is timely and instructive. A poor Scottish immigrant, Carnegie impressed a succession of employers with his skills, intelligence and diligence. He also had a Machiavellian bent, and by the time he was 30, he had built a financial empire based on insider contracts to supply the Pennsylvania Railroad with materials and build iron bridges for it. Carnegie's Protestant ethics became situational; he hired a substitute in the Civil War and guided money into his own pocket as a civilian advisor to the government. A shrewd investor, he survived economic panics and made out fine in booms, shielded by a strategy of using other people's money to expand his interests. The darkest side of Carnegie's character emerged when he and his partners reversed earlier policies of rewarding workers with high wages and benefits, allowing unions to operate freely. Leaving it to lieutenants to manage matters, Carnegie--whose personal fortune probably exceeded Bill Gates's today--spent more and more time in Europe as labor unrest mounted in the 1880s and '90s, exemplified by the bloody strike at his Homestead steel plant. Bowed, Carnegie devoted himself to philanthropy, endowing libraries and scientific institutions and pursuing anti-imperialist and pacifist causes, very unlike most of his fellow Republicans--from whom he pointedly split. A complex man of parts, then, not all of them good. Nasaw (The Chief: The Life of William Randolph Hearst, 2000) does brilliant work in bringing the man to life. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
