Andrew Carnegie (Your Coach in a Box)
by David Nasaw
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Book Summary Information
Author: David NasawReader: Grover Gardner
Edition: Music CD
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Unknown); English (Published)
Format: Audiobook, Unabridged
Published: 2007-10-09
ISBN: 1596591242
Publisher: Your Coach Digital
Book Reviews of Andrew Carnegie (Your Coach in a Box)
Book Review: A Disappointing Look at an Iconic Figure
Summary: 3 Stars
I would love to give this work a higher rating than 3 "stars." Carnegie is a very important figure from the late 19th and early 20th century, someone whose life story reveals much about his times. Like Rockefeller, he could practice, or at least countenance, some very tough, self-focused business practices, yet at the same time engage in incredible works of charity towards others. And like Rockefeller, he seemed to be able to balance these two seemingly conflicting goals without ever seeing tension between these two realms of his life. Many of the institutions that he began are strewn across our social and physical landscape. Some are easily recognizable because they bear his name (Carnegie Hall, Carnegie-Mellon, Carnegie Institute for Peace) while others are not so easily identified (TIAA-CREF, Carnegie libraries all over the western world). Interestingly, Carnegie was a confirmed capitalist who held many very progressive political views.
Yet with all the important reasons for us to learn about Carnegie, this hefty, 801 page biography disappoints. The design is slavishly chronological, with no concessions to themes. Surely there were some themes to Carnegie's life, weren't there? His belief in the capitalist system? His promotion of the Gospel of Wealth? His love of the "good life?" Yet David Nasaw never lets us escape from the prison of the calendar, as this book marches on, chapter after chapter, 42 in all, never departing very long to explore a theme for too long, lest we miss the turning of a page of the calendar. This could have been a much better read if the book had been broken into parts, with each part representing different seasons of Carnegie's life, for surely it did seem to have seasons, each one seemingly representing his focus on different themes or interests. Each part could have had a chapter focusing on the theme for that season, perhaps giving us more insight into his motivations.
But I'm dreaming here about another book, one that has not been written, and certainly not Nasaw's biography. This plodding work lulls you to sleep, regaling the reader with the annual repetitions of Carnegie's life, needlessly repeating the cadence of his years. This project was in need of a demanding and thoughtful editor, and unfortunately for Nasaw and Carnegie such a person never showed up.
Summary of Andrew Carnegie (Your Coach in a Box)
Majestically told and based on materials not available to any previous biographer, the definitive life of Andrew Carnegie-one of American business's most iconic and elusive titans-by the bestselling author of The Chief: The Life of William Randolph Hearst.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 facinating and complex man, deftly placing his life in cultural and political context as only a master storyteller can.Biographies & Memoirs Books
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