# Andrew Carnegie

- Link: https://fundraising.co.uk/books/andrew-carnegie/
- Published: 2007-06-30T07:54:00+01:00
- Author: Howard Lake

**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.**

Born of modest origins in Scotland in 1835, Andrew Carnegie is best known as the
founder of Carnegie Steel.

The son of an impoverished linen weaver, Carnegie moved to Pittsburgh at the age
of 13. 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With a trove of new material―unpublished chapters of Carnegie’s Autobiography; personal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 investigates the core of this fascinating and
complex man, deftly placing his life in cultural and political context as only a
master storyteller can.

## Other philanthropists

 * **[George Soros: a life in full](https://fundraising.co.uk/books/george-soros-a-life-in-full/)(
   2022)**[](https://fundraising.co.uk/books/andrew-carnegie/void(0))