Harold C. Livesay's Andrew Carnegie and the Rise of Big Business is a biography of Scottish-American businessman and philanthropist Andrew Carnegie. Harold C. Livesay's book begins on on November 25, 1835 in  Dunfermline, Scotland when Carengie was born to poor parents. It covers the family's emigration to the United States in 1848 in search of economic opportunity, and Carnegie's career as industrialist and philanthropist, and culminates with his death in August 11, 1919. The author Harold C. Livesay, a professor in the History Department at Texas A&M University, himself held some of the same sort of blue collar jobs in which the Carnegie family labored before obtaining his undergraduate and graduate degrees, and specializing in American economic and labor history. 

This best-selling biography, written for a general audience, begins with a description of how emigrant communities cooperate to help members achieve the "American Dream," providing not only social and career networks but often temporary accommodations and facilitating new immigrants' adaptations to a new world. Next, it covers Carnegie's apprenticeship in the railroad industry, and how he used that expertise as a core to his career. From his initial railroad position, he begins an investment program, and learns how finance and growth of capital underpin wealth, and moves to New York, where he becomes increasingly skilled at stock manipulation and meets many of the leading thinkers of his period. The biography then traces Carnegie's successes in the railroad and steel businesses and his development of a successful industrial conglomerate. 

Although the book focuses on Carnegie's industrial career, perhaps just as impressive as Carnegie's achievements as an industrialist were his authorial and philanthropic activities, especially after his 1901 retirement. Among his greatest and most enduring achievement were his endowments of hundreds of public libraries across the United States and Scotland, giving future generations free access to the sort of knowledge that would allow them to follow the same path of self-improvement that he did.