Joseph Frazier Wall

This masterful biography of a giant of American industry--the first full life of Andrew Carnegie in more than a generation--triumphantly reveals every aspect of the man's complex personality and fabulous career. So varied were Carnegie's activities in industry, politics, education, philanthropy, and pacifism that his life encompasses much of the general history of the United States and of Great Britain down to the outbreak of World War I. Professor Wall is particularly successful in capturing the excitement of America's dynamic period of business expansion in the generation after the Civil War.Carnegie the man remains at the center of the book--impulsive, haughty, idealistic, warm, loyal, and shrewd--and the drama of his life from telegraph boy to millionaire philanthropist is emphasized. His Scottish background is thoroughly investigated: Professor Wall is concerned throughout with Carnegie's attempts to reconcile his spectacular business success and position in the American plutocracy with the egalitarian and Radical Chartist ideas of his family and youth.Carnegie's letterbooks and early business files, in the possession of the United States Steel Corporation and until now inaccessible to historians, were made available to the author. This vital and valuable collection of records is unsurpassed in its revelation of how Carnegie's own corporations operated, and also as an actual example of the development of a great American industry. Dr. Wall also consulted the huge collection of Carnegie material in the Library of Congress and the papers of Carnegie's business secretary, Robert Franks. Carnegie's daughter, Mrs. Roswell Miller, was kind enough to allow Professor Wall to read the private correspondence between Andrew Carnegie and his wife Louise, also not previously available to scholars.The epic, highly-charged relationship between Carnegie and Henry Clay Frick emerges brilliantly, and the story of Carnegie's ventures in oil, railroad building, telegraphy, and iron and steel is clearly and fully presented. The book gives place also to a myriad of fascinating figures in America and Europe, including William Gladstone, Matthew Arnold, and Herbert Spencer in England, and J. P. Morgan, George Pullman, Mark Twain, William Jennings Bryan, Booker T. Washington, and Presidents Lincoln, McKinley, Theodore Roosevelt, and Wilson in America. It has much to say also about the impact of the Civil War on American industrialism, industrial statesmen and robber barons, and the influence of Social Darwinism on the business community.This rounded, honest biography, while compassionate, does not hesitate to call Carnegie to task for some of his financial dealings, his often arbitrary personal relationships and his occasional hypocrisy, or to show him at his worst--when dealing with the tragic Homestead strike of 1892. But the reader takes from the book a full understanding of why to so many Americans Carnegie's death meant the end of an era in American history.

If Alfred I. du Pont was born to "the purple and ermine" of an American industrial dynasty, his life was far from peaceful, pampered, indolent. Beginning at the bottom as little more than a teamster and handyman, within fifteen years young du Pont was widely recognized as "the best black powderman in the nation" and the mechanical genius of the du Pont family. In 1902, upon the death of Eugene du Pont, Alfred was brash and confident enough to claim for himself the company his elders wanted to sell to their major competitor, Laflin and Rand. With two cousins, he formed a triumvirate which ultimately converted the old gunpowder company into the great chemical empire it is today. In this brilliantly written, in-depth biography, Joseph Frazier Wall ranges from Pierre Samuel du Pont de Nemours's spectacular rise in pre-Revolutionary France, to the family's migration to America and the founding of the Du Pont Company in Wilmington, to Alfred's death in 1935, charting the growth of one of America's great industrial dynasties. We meet Henry du Pont, the conservative leader of the third generation (he favored candles over electric lights in the office), who organized the entire gunpowder industry; Lammot du Pont, the crown prince of the third generation, who died tragically in an explosion at the Repauno plant; Eugene du Pont, whom Wall describes as "a director without direction"; and a host of other du Pont men and women. But Alfred du Pont remains the center of the narrative. Wall details his rejuvenation of the family company after Eugene's death, the bitter family feud that followed his marriage to his cousin Alicia, the fifteen-year battle that he waged with some of the family's most powerful members (leading to his ouster from the company in 1916), and his brilliant second career in Florida (where he pioneered the development of sound banking, transportation, and the paper industry). This is the first biography of Alfred du Pont to appear in half a century. In preparing it, Wall had complete access both to Alfred's own papers in Florida as well as the vast collection of the du Pont archives in Wilmington. The result is a compelling story of one of America's most creative businessmen as well as an inside look at one of our most historically significant families.

The decorative dust jacket adds much to this hardcover. Some soiling from dust on page edges. Name and date inside front cover. Book is like new inside, free of markings, bright and clean. Not a library book and not price-clipped. /lh

In a remarkable essay entitled "Wealth" and published in 1889, Andrew Carnegie argued that there were only three alternatives by which a man of great wealth could dispose of his Leave it to his family, bequeath it in his will for public purposes, or administer its distribution for public benefit during his lifetime. Carnegie chose the latter. Here, in this essay by Pulitzer-Prize nominee Joseph Frazier Wall, is the extraordinary story of how he addressed his "burden."

In this most engaging history of one of America's premier liberal arts colleges, Wall captures far more than the formation and growth of Grinnell College, Iowa. It is also a story about organized religion and religious values in nineteenth-century America, about westward expansion across the Mississippi River, and about town building on the prairies.Strong personalities drive the early Leonard and Sarah Parker, George F. Magoun, George Herron, Carrie Rand, Martha Foote Crowe, and above all, George Augustus Gates. Wall's quotations from personal letters and college minutes illuminate their backgrounds, motivations, and aspirations.The book was originally commissioned by President George Drake as a sesquicentennial history of the college. This volume contains the story Wall had completed when he died. Mrs Bea Wall finished her husband's last chapter.

Who knew the history of Iowa could be so interesting? Very well written and accessible, lending insight into the geographical, agricultural and civic roots of a very independent-minded population.

Traces the history of a tenth century Scottish castle which for the last eighty years was a summer home of the Andrew Carnegie family

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