Buy used: $2.99

$19.98 delivery July 26 - August 16. Details

Used: Good | Details

Sold by glenthebookseller

Access codes and supplements are not guaranteed with used items.

Add to List

Added to

Unable to add item to List. Please try again.

Have one to sell?

Sell on Amazon

Flip to back Flip to front

Listen Playing... Paused You're listening to a sample of the Audible audio edition.
Learn more

See this image

Follow the Author

Joseph Frazier Wall

Andrew Carnegie Paperback – June 7, 1989

by Joseph Frazier Wall (Author)

3.9 19 ratings

See all formats and editions

Price

New from

Used from

Hardcover

"Please retry"

$50.34

$42.56

$24.49

Paperback

"Please retry"

$2.99

$29.99

$2.99

The definitive biography of an industrial genius, philanthropist, and enigma.

Print length

1168 pages
Language

English
Publisher

University of Pittsburgh Press
Publication date

June 7, 1989
Dimensions

6 x 1.75 x 9.25 inches
ISBN-10

0822959046
ISBN-13

978-0822959045
See all details

Lowest Pricein this set of products
Andrew Carnegie
606
Paperback
$8.90
$15.86 shipping
Most purchased | Highest ratedin this set of products
Robert B Cialdini PhD
3,876
Hardcover
$18.99
$17.53 shipping
This item:
Joseph Frazier Wall
19
Paperback
28 offers from $2.99
Ron Chernow
3,391
Paperback
$19.49
$18.62 shipping
David S. Landes
545
Paperback
$13.79
$17.88 shipping
Robert G. Hagstrom
306
Paperback
$16.29
$15.64 shipping
Jared Diamond Ph.D.
12,739
Paperback
$13.77
$16.79 shipping
Arthur Herman
1,546
Paperback
$10.99
$15.86 shipping
David Nasaw
621
Paperback
$14.84
$17.40 shipping
John Gribbin
85
Hardcover
$28.00
$16.20 shipping
Frank Partnoy
143
Paperback
$16.14
Get it as soon as Monday, Jul 24
$15.36 shipping
Only 1 left in stock - order soon.

Editorial Reviews

Review

“This is not only a masterly study of the great empire-builder and philanthropist but an engrossing chronicle of the rise of Big Business in the U.S.”
--Publishers Weekly

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ University of Pittsburgh Press; 1st edition (June 7, 1989)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 1168 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0822959046
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0822959045
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 2.9 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6 x 1.75 x 9.25 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #1,394,591 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #455 in Reference & Collections of Biographies
- #3,773 in Business Professional's Biographies

Customer Reviews:
3.9 19 ratings

Brief content visible, double tap to read full content.

Full content visible, double tap to read brief content.

Videos

Help others learn more about this product by uploading a video!

Upload your video

About the author

Follow authors to get new release updates, plus improved recommendations.

Joseph Frazier Wall

Brief content visible, double tap to read full content.

Full content visible, double tap to read brief content.

Discover more of the author’s books, see similar authors, read author blogs and more

Customer reviews

3.9 out of 5

19 global ratings

5 star
4 star
3 star
2 star
1 star

How customer reviews and ratings work

Sort reviews by

Top reviews from the United States

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.

caleb

Astounding, life changing read.

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on December 14, 2021

Verified Purchase

This Epic on Andrew was one of the most pleasurable reads of my life. I appreciate the authors depth and attention to detail. I truly felt such an impact my the time I reached the epilog. A master class in business, strategy, history and much more. I'd never read something so long before, but I finished this in less then 4 weeks. I felt so connected to the characters and the drama. The fact that this is all a true story is memorizing and has sparked a dramatic change in my psychology. Andrew is exactly the kind of guy I was looking for to help me think more profoundly about my future.

Forever thankfull to the authors hard work and I pray he reads this comment.

I don't think this work deserves any less then five stars. Readers who think otherwise are probably too impatient to see Andrew leave Dunfermline.

Cheers!!

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on November 29, 2006

Verified Purchase

I have three main problems with this book:

1) The author explores the social critiques of Carnigie's life in detail and seems to side with a leftist point of view.

2) The author dwells on the personal side of Carnigie's life to the detriment of the business side of his life.

3) The first two issues result in a long tedius book to read.

I definitely would not suggest buying this book. I finally gave up on the book about 2/3 of the way through it.

It would be nice to read a book on Carnigie by someone who understands, business, capitalism and freedom.

17 people found this helpful

Helpful

NGS

My former teacher and friend, Joe Wall, has ...

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on August 30, 2016

Verified Purchase

My former teacher and friend, Joe Wall, has written a classic that outlives him in bringing the Carnegie story to life.

One person found this helpful

Helpful

Wilson R

Maybe it is the way it is written..

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on January 4, 2014

Verified Purchase

I am pretty sure its probably a good book.. i found no logical way of going through it and reading it.. it is written very strange.. i had to put the book down right away.. maybe it is just my experience. i am sure that maybe other people would find that the book is very informative...

One person found this helpful

Helpful

Stephen Davis

As described

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on December 29, 2018

Verified Purchase

Used product as described

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on July 9, 2015

Verified Purchase

A wonderful biography. Read it about 20 years ago and wanted to take another look.

Helpful

Andrew Barrett

A monumental work - though rather dry at times

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on August 19, 2007

2nd Edition (1989), University of Pittsburgh Press, 1,117 pages (of which 1,047 for main body)

Andrew Carnegie is another of the twenty books that Charlie Munger recommends at the back of the second edition of Poor Charlie's Almanack. If you've read any of my other reviews this will not surprise you, as I am working my way through his list. After all, if a man like Munger - whose thinking prowess is revered by a man of Buffett's abilities - takes the trouble to recommend only twenty books out of all those he has read over a long life time, surely one should actually read them?

You can see from the page count that even reading this book (described by the author as a 'massive tome') is a significant undertaking (let alone the 'many long years' that Wall spent on it). I am left with somewhat mixed feelings after finishing the book: admiration for the vast amount of research that went into it, but also a certain amount of disappointment that some part of Carnegie's character seemed to be missing.

When I reviewed 'Titan', the biography of Carnegie's contemporary, Rockefeller, by Ron Chernow (also on Munger's recommended list) earlier in the year I awarded the book a maximum five stars and said that it was as entertaining as a novel. I also said that I'd not read many biographies and so was somewhat hesitant in my opinion. Andrew Carnegie was thus a particularly useful book to read, as it covers a similarly successful businessman over roughly the same period and location.

I felt that Titan gave a fuller view of Rockefeller, the man, and the things that drove him. I've spent some time considering why Wall's biography of Carnegie seems somewhat two-dimensional in comparison. I've concluded that it probably has something to do with the way that Wall would say, for example, that Carnegie wrote a speech or worked on his autobiography but he doesn't give much indication of how Carnegie would actually spend his day.

Did he work all day on some days, or only at certain times of the day? How did he fit in work (whether business or, later, philanthropy) with the many visitors at Skibo in Scotland? Did he vary his work habits during the year as he moved between Scotland and the US? Did he plan his writing (he was a prolific author of speeches, articles and books) and did he find writing easy as well as enjoyable? I found the absence of these mundane details made it harder to identify with Carnegie.

That said, there were some very interesting and even exciting passages in the book. There is a marvellous story about how Carnegie's manager and business partner, Henry Clay Frick, was shot twice with a small pistol in the neck at short range and stabbed three times in the hip and legs by a would-be assassin. Frick sat in a chair without anaesthetic, directing the doctor as he extracted the bullets. He then insisted upon returning to his desk to cable his mother and Carnegie and to finish some urgent paperwork. It was at the time of the infamous strike at the Homestead plant and before Frick would allow himself to be taken home by ambulance he prepared this statement:

"This incident will not change the attitude of the Carnegie Steel Company toward the Amalgamated Association. I do not think I shall die, but whether I do or not, the Company will pursue the same policy and it will win."

Eventually Frick and Carnegie ended up in open warfare over the control of Carnegie Steel. Wall quotes sections of the board minutes as the fight begins and one feels almost like a direct spectator. Now you know something of Frick's character, you'll be unsurprised that I thought this was the most exciting part of the book.

Rather like Rockefeller, Carnegie retired from business and devoted himself to philanthropy. Also like Rockefeller, Carnegie found giving his money away more difficult and burdensome than actually making it (in fact it nearly gave Rockefeller a breakdown). I think the key here is that it is easy to give money away, but if you are determined to do it effectively (and it was anathema to men like Rockefeller and Carnegie to do it any other way) then it is extremely hard. Particularly when vast quantities of money are involved.

However, Wall's book contains a superb example of the superpower of incentives (and also of an extremely strong positive unintended consequence). Carnegie created an endowment to provide free pensions for university professors because he was concerned that their very low wages (senior professors earned salaries comparable to clerks working for Carnegie Steel) and lack of pensions were causing two major problems:

1. A lack of talented people becoming teachers.
2. Professors staying on long after they should have retired because it was the only way colleges could pay them a pension (again preventing entry of young people).

It had a huge effect because the trustees evaluated all of the colleges in the US and only approved around 50 of over 400 that applied (most were rejected because of low academic entry standards or because of sectarian requirements). The effect of the good teachers wanting to move to colleges where they could access a free pension was so strong that it forced a significant improvement of entry standards across the country, which in turn drove a significant improvement in standards in schools across the country that fed the colleges. It also forced many sectarian/religious colleges to become non-sectarian.

Munger has said that perhaps the most important job in management is to get the incentives right. The marvellous example above shows that, with the right incentives, apparently intractable problems can sometimes simply resolve themselves (just as with FedEx's initial delivery problems).

Overall, Andrew Carnegie is a fine and worthy book, but one that takes some reading.

9 people found this helpful

Helpful

Bomojaz

World's richest man

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on November 21, 2005

Andrew Carnegie was born in Scotland in 1835 and came to America at age 13. He started working with the Pennsylvania Railroad, and then got in on the ground floor of the steel business. Unlike Rockefeller, his great rival in the race to become the world's richest man, who was motivated by a pious Baptist fervor, Carnegie was a Scottish agnostic Darwinist. (He was three times richer than Rockefeller, by the way.) A frequent contributor to popular magazines of the day, mainly on economic and social issues, he was a follower of Herbert Spencer.

Practical and somewhat crude in manners, the bottom line is what drove him in business. He retired in 1900 and devoted himself to philanthropy (he published a book that year - THE GOSPEL OF WEALTH - in which he proclaimed it was the duty of those who had become extremely wealthy to help those who were less fortunate). Among other things, he began donating library buildings (always just the buildings, never any books) to communities around the country. They were a huge success. Late in his life he became obsessed with world peace and pacificism, less successfully. Although the book is overwritten at 1,200+ pages, Wall writes well and commands our interest. Highly recommended.

5 people found this helpful

Helpful

Sorry, there was a problem.

Sorry, there was a problem.

Follow the Author

Andrew Carnegie Paperback – June 7, 1989

What do customers buy after viewing this item?

Editorial Reviews

Review

Product details

Videos

About the author

Joseph Frazier Wall

Customer reviews

Top reviews from the United States

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.