The Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie

Andrew Carnegie tells his own story, from a poor immigrant boyhood that included work in a cotton mill to the fortune he made as a steel baron, and a later life as a philanthropist. Starting from humble beginnings in Scotland, he came to control the biggest steel empire in American history, and his dictum that the man who dies rich dies disgraced has guided philanthropists for generations. In his lifetime he set up a family of organizations working for international peace, democracy and social progress. The memoir, published after his death, sets out the principles he lived by and gives first-hand impressions of 19th-century America and of eminent figures of the age, among them Abraham Lincoln and Mark Twain.

Laurentiu-Victor Balasa, CEO of Underline, said he reads it to appreciate how much easier entrepreneurship is today.