Self Made in America

How did the son of a con man and a bigamist become America’s wealthiest businessman and greatest philanthropist? How did the son of an alcoholic shoe salesman become a movie star and the President of the United States? How did a penniless orphan become a war hero and the dominant political leader of his age? The self-made man is a classic American type: the poor boy who makes good. Yet few books have studied exactly how such men advance. “Self Made in America” examines the careers of sixteen of the most famous examples of the type: Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Mellon, John D. Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie, Henry Clay Frick, E.H. Harriman, Henry Ford, Booker T. Washington, Herbert Hoover, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, and Bill Clinton. The result is a fascinating study not only of how ambitious men succeed but of how American society works.