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 Americas most famous and successful businessmen and philanthropistsin what will prove to be the biography of the season Born of modest origins in Scotland in 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 Nasaws 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 publica 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 capitalismCarnegie 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 materialunpublished chapters of Carnegies 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 TwainNasaw 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.
