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American Experience

Andrew Carnegie: The Richest Man in the World

Andrew Carnegie's life seemed touched by magic. He embodied the American dream: the immigrant who went from rags to riches, the self-made man who became a captain of industry, the king of steel. Yet "Carnegie is still, right throughout his life, the little boy in the fairy story, for whom everything has to be all right," says Owen Dudley Edwards, historian at the University of Edinburgh.

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