| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 94.2

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 94.2 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Andrew Carnegie. By David Nasaw. (New York: Penguin, 2006. xiv, 878 pp. $35.00, ISBN 1-59420-104-8.)
David Nasaw's biography of William Randolph Hearst, for which he was awarded the Bancroft Prize for 2001, was exhaustively researched and detailed. In the case of Hearst, that approach makes sense. Much has been written about him, but Nasaw's account is clearly the most scholarly and authoritative. He established a record of the life of an important, if exceptionally unattractive, businessperson. The problem with Nasaw's biography of Andrew Carnegie is that he takes the same approach to the story of a more complicated man about whom we already know a great deal. In this case, is the biographer's assignment still to establish the factual record?	1
The biography to which Nasaw's will inevitably be compared is Joseph Frazier Wall's Andrew Carnegie, also a Bancroft Prize–winner, originally published in 1970 and republished in 1989. At 1,047 pages of text, Wall's book is lengthier than Nasaw's 801-page volume. The reviews Wall received would be the envy of any historian. Edward C. Kirkland wrote, "The book pulses with life, it moves with excitement. It is a brilliant achievement. I predict it will outlive its generation" (Business History Review, Spring 1971, pp. 127–29). Ray Ginger began his review with three words: "A noble biography" (Industrial and Labor Relations Review, Oct. 1971, pp. 140–41).	. . .

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