During the final decades of the 19th century, the United States experienced a transformation of epic proportion. It was a period dubbed the Gilded Age, a term borrowed from a satirical novel by Mark Twain that captured a society whose glittering wealth concealed deep social tensions.
Between the end of the Civil War in 1865 and the turn of the century, the US became the world’s leading industrial power. New railroads stitched the country together, new technologies revolutionised manufacturing and finance, and a small group of entrepreneurs accumulated fortunes on a scale previously unimaginable.
Among these magnates, names such as oil baron John D Rockefeller, banker JP Morgan and railroad tycoon Cornelius Vanderbilt, was Andrew Carnegie.
Physically, Carnegie barely reached the shoulder of his rivals, but his influence was colossal. By perfecting the large-scale production of steel, the material that made skyscrapers and transcontinental railways possible, Carnegie helped define modern America.
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