Assignment 13A

1. I chose to read Andrew Carnegie.

The thing that surprised me most and the thing that I most admired were the same thing; he was someone who was born into poverty, yet became one of the richest, most well-known and most successful businessmen of all time.

Something that I do not admire about him is the way that he lied to his investors, while I can understand why that might seem necessary from an owner's point of view. As someone who likes to watch the stock market and invest in stocks, I know that I would be very disappointed even as a very small investor if a company was to feed false information.

Carnegie experiences a HUGE amount of failures. Some of his failures were personal, many professional. All in all, his way of overcoming them to me was simply by pushing on and not giving up. For example, he made many great business decisions, but he also made many that turned out very poorly and cost him a great deal of money. These failures did not force him to quit, however, as is evident by his ultimate success.

2. Carnegie was had a great deal of natural intelligence. While he did not receive much formal education, he was someone who was still quick thinking and described as quick-minded. Another key competency that he had was a mind for business. This is again evident through the success that Carnegie Steel had throughout the years.

3. The part that I got the most confused in was actually during the beginning of the book. Going over the history of Carnegie's family was something that I knew nothing about beforehand, whereas I knew a little bit about his business ventures. Also, the names Andra and Andrew were used interchangeably in the beginning only, something that I had to reread the beginning of the book to understand better.

4. What stocks should I invest in today, and if you could restart your life today, would you go into the same ventures?
The first question because making money through investing was how he made a name for himself, and he may still be effective in determining where to invest today. The second is for many reasons, with the main being that he decided to change his life entirely near the end of it, going from worrying about making money to selling his business and literally giving money away.

5. I feel that his view of hard-work was just that; working hard in everything that you do and never giving up. This is something that is very closely in line with my own views.