Andrew Carnegie - on Playaway Author:David Nasaw Playaway is the easiest way to listen to a book on the go. An all-in-one format, the player and content are combined in one 2 ounce unit and it comes with everything you need to start listening immediately. No separate player needed, no CDs, no downloads just press play! — "Andrew Carnegie, whose lifetime spanned the era from the beginning of th... more »e Industrial Revolution to the First World War, was America's first modern titan. In this magnificent biography, celebrated historian David Nasaw brings to life this period of unprecedented transition -- a time of self-made millionaires, scabs, strikes, and a new kind of philanthropy -- through the fascinating rags-to-riches story of one of our most iconic business legends.
The Scottish-born son of a failed weaver and a mother who supported the family by binding shoes, Andrew Carnegie is the embodiment of the American dream. He rose from a job as a bobbin boy in a cotton factory to become a telegraph messenger, Pennsylvania Railroad employee, bridge builder, bond trader, iron and steel maker, and eventually, the richest man in the world. In this climb to power and in the accumulation of his fortune he was single-minded and relentless, and a major player in some of the most violent and notorious labor strikes of the time. The prototype of today's billionaire, he was a visionary in the way that he earned his money and in the way that he gave it away. Yet he has remained to this day an enigma and a man of striking contradictions.
David Nasaw is the author of the nationally bestselling biography The Chief: The Life of William Randolph Hearst, winner of the Bancroft Prize, the J. Anthony Lukas Prize, the Ambassador Book Award, and finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Biography. He has also written Going Out: The Rise and Fall of Public Amusements and Children of the City: At Work and at Play.« less