Perspective

Harold C. Livesay is the author of this biography, "Andrew Carnegie and the Rise of Big Business." Like Carnegie, Livesay starts as a poor workman picking tomatoes, working on a ferry boat, repairing telephones, working as a railroad yardmaster and as truck driver delivering steel to construction sites. Driving trucks in the early 1960s, Livesay takes the opportunity to evaluate American steel and other industries he characterizes as "bloated, arrogant and inefficient." Committed like Carnegie to improve his life, Livesay trades in his truck cab for a Johns Hopkins University Ph.D. degree and a professorship in 1970.

He writes this biography about a man he admires who is often mischaracterized solely as "a penny-pinching zealot who drove workers and managers alike" while conniving "to make more money" and gets caught up in the "worst labor disputes." Ironically, Andrew Carnegie, as Livesay portrays him, repudiates unending work, plans to...