Meet You in Hell

Andrew Carnegie, Henry Clay Frick, and the Bitter Partnership That Transformed America

By: Les Standiford

Narrated by: John Dossett

Length: 4 hrs and 54 mins

Publisher's summary

Two founding fathers of American industry. One desire to dominate business at any price.

“Masterful . . . Standiford has a way of making the 1890s resonate with a twenty-first-century audience.”—USA Today

“The narrative is as absorbing as that of any good novel—and as difficult to put down.”—Miami Herald

The author of Last Train to Paradise tells the riveting story of Andrew Carnegie, Henry Clay Frick, and the bloody steelworkers’ strike that transformed their fabled partnership into a furious rivalry. Set against the backdrop of the Gilded Age, Meet You in Hell captures the majesty and danger of steel manufacturing, the rough-and-tumble of the business world, and the fraught relationship between “the world’s richest man” and the ruthless coke magnate to whom he entrusted his companies. The result is an extraordinary work of popular history.

©2005 Les Standiford (P)2005 Random House, Inc. Random House Audio, a division of Random House, Inc.

Critic reviews

“A muscular, enthralling read that takes you back to a time when two titans of industry, Andrew Carnegie and Henry Clay Frick, clashed in a battle of wills and egos that had seismic ramifications not only for themselves but for anyone living in the United States, then and now. . . . So engaging I found myself wishing only that it were longer.” —Dennis Lehane, author of Shutter Island and Mystic River

“This superbly researched and beautifully written account of the expression of business genius a century ago illumines both the sociopathy and the generosity that then as now characterize the dynamics of capitalism.” —Robert A. G. Monks, principal of Lens Governance Advisors and coauthor of Corporate Governance

“Les Standiford’s novelistic genius brings alive the familiar story of Carnegie and Frick with clarity and verve and a fresh eye. . . . The most dazzling aspect of this dazzling book is the author’s clear and engaging depictions of the intricacies of the business world of another century.” —James W. Hall, author of Forests of the Night

A story filled with errors

Les Standiford is the author of numerous books of fiction. For some reason, he decided to try to tell the story of Frick and Carnegie. While this book is interesting at points, it fails as a history book for a number of reasons. First, the research the author did (the hardcory has a bibliography) is very limited, and this shows throughout the book. The author knows almost nothing of the age of which he is writing, and thus provides little context for the events and personalities he's describing. What little context he does provide is often wrong. He knows nothing about how a corporation's stock works, so is unable to describe accurately the way Carnegie took control of Frick's company.

The second problem is the number of historical errors. Saugus is in MA, not MI; anthracite was discovered in Eastern PA, not Western, etc etc. He wrongly attributes a bunch of financial speculators from Chicago with "pioneering the invention of vertical integration". Well, if you've only read 5 books on the period and only 2 of them were economic histories, you might make these kind of errors.

Finally, the author fails to explain how America was changed by the relationship of these two men. At the end, he makes a ridiculous attempt to draw lessons for today from his history. He takes a swipe at Wal-Mart for being non-union, as if the role of unions has not changed from Carnegie's time to the present.

There are wonderful books on this fascinating period of American history by qualified writers (John Steele Gordon and David McCullough). This is unforunately not one of them, and Standiford is out of his league here.