Book description
Andrew Carnegie (1835-1922) was a mass of contradictions: a radical
Chartist who became a rabid capitalist, an idealist who was also a
profound cynic, a committed pacifist who also played a crucial role in
the opening part of the American Civil War, and a ladies' man who had
to wait until his fifties (after his domineering mother died) before
forming a meaningful relationship with a woman.
From bobbin boy in a Pittsburgh factory he progressed to messenger
boy, telegraphist and railway superintendent. His meteoric rise owed
much to his boss, Thomas Scott, who also cut the young Carnegie in on
his first lucrative share deal. The youth who earned thirty-five
dollars a month was on the road to his first million within a year or
two, and he never looked back. Speculation in rolling-stock and
railways, the nascent oil industry, iron and, above all, steel made
Carnegie the richest man in the world. Along the way he created
fortunes for many others, but trampled on friend and foe alike in his
relentless pursuit of money.
Then, the man who amassed the largest fortune in the world proceeded
to give most of it away. From free libraries to world peace, the
Carnegie millions were pumped into a host of worthy causes. The Peace
Palace at the Hague is the lasting legacy of this global philanthropy;
but Carnegie's faith in the Kaiser to achieve world peace was
shattered by the outbreak of the First World War, and it was a setback
from which he never recovered.
This candid and penetrating biography follows Carnegie from his
humble birthplace in Dunfermline to the squalor of Allegheny City and
Pittsburgh in the 1840s, and charts his dramatic rise to fame and
fortune. Set against the contrasting backdrops of radical Scotland and
America during the most turbulent phase of its development, Little
Boss is the definitive story of one of the world's greatest
captains of industry.
Dr James Mackay is an award-winning author and historian, and is
widely regarded as the world's greatest authority on the life and works
of Robert Burns. As well as his definitive biography,
Burns
, winner of the Saltire Award for Scottish Book of the Year, he has
published accounts of the lives of the great Scottish patriot William
Wallace and the Irish statesman Michael Collins. He is also the author
of biographies of the celebrated detective Allan Pinkerton (
The Eye
Who Never Slept
), the poet Robert Service (
Vagabond of Verse
) and Alexander Graham Bell (
Sounds Out of Silence
).
