I really wanted to like this book. Carnegie has been a hero of mine since I read his essay, The Gospel of Wealth, my freshman year at BYU. The arguments in the Gospel of Wealth, summed up by the statement “The man who dies thus rich dies disgraced” remain meaningful and solid, yet they are not actually explored in this book.
Instead, the book is written mediocrely in bland pros. Any philosophy Carnegie does try to explicate comes off as horn tooting and virtue signaling, perhaps because he tries so hard to make it sound as if it isn’t.
He was clearly an unparalleled industrialist, but his writing is mediocre at best. To be fair, maybe the last 1/3 of the book gets really good. I wouldn’t know, I couldn’t finish it!
I’d say skip this book and just enjoy the essay linked above.