Reviews for Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie

The average rating for Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2016-10-15 00:00:00 Kevin Mcgeough Interesting but terribly written I was curious to learn more about this story, and this book did the trick, but the whole time I was frustrated by the poor writing. So many "really"s, "very"s, and things like, "They are so lame, they couldn't ______ a ______ in ______" (catch/cold/winter, find/steer/a stampede, find/steak/an Outback, find/batter/a batter's box, etc.). Markopolos repeats stories and tells over and over his reasoning for various choices he made. It feels like he is filling in space because he just didn't have enough for a whole book without the repetition. Honestly, it's like he didn't have an editor! Another noticeable feature was Markopolos' arrogance. He's obviously a brilliant guy and the SEC is remarkably incompetent. But he is also that guy who goes through life drawing a very sharp lines between who is smart and stupid, and who is ethical and immoral (guess which categories he places himself in) and this book was his chance to share these judgments with the world as much as it was for him to tell the Madoff story. He tells his story in such a smug way. There is some justification for his self-importance, given the circumstances, but a little humility would have gone a long way with me. I was often distracted from the story so I could think to myself, "Man, I really don't like this guy." In all, worth the read to hear the whole story, but be prepared that you might feel like you are reading the diary of a smart but arrogant and socially awkward middle school boy. I wish he would have gotten Michael Lewis (or Jon Krakauer!) to write his story for him.

Review # 2 was written on 2020-12-19 00:00:00 Todd Simmiss This is an outstanding piece of work. Bernie Madoff was investigated by Markopolos and his team over a period of ten years, and yet this book reads with all the urgency and thrills of a case unfolding now and in a short window. Markopolos admits he is not politically correct, and he holds back no punches for agencies that obstructed, obscured, and ignored information that could have led to the detention of Madoff years before his scheme became widely known. And Markopolos is funny. The language in the book reads as though he were speaking--it has an immediacy, and an irreverence that most of us wouldn't dare commit to paper but which gives the book a refreshing and unstudied artlessness. It is so not lawyerspeak. This is a book we all need to read. I am here to say it is no burden to put this on your reading list. It is another example of how a good democracy can work. Citizens must take notice of fraud, and speak of it, lest it overtake us. Incompetence in the regulatory agencies we hire to protect us is unacceptable. We might even recognize unfettered greed as the social ill it is. Sometimes I think Americans get confused about this--they might even admire it.