Andrew Carnegie (1835-1919)
Filed under the name Andrew · October 13, 2026
Andrew Carnegie gave away most of his industrial fortune, and the piece of that giving I find most beautifully designed, so to speak, is the libraries — over 2,500 of them, built specifically so that access to books and learning wouldn't depend on how much money a family had. There's something almost architectural about that choice, building the actual physical infrastructure of opportunity into towns that otherwise might never have had it, rather than just writing checks to existing institutions. My own family's story runs through both an old Brooklyn neighborhood and my mother's refugee crossing from Vietnam, and I think a lot about what access to a library, a free space just to read and learn, can genuinely change for a kid without resources. Carnegie's wealth came from an era and an industry with real, hard questions attached to it, and I don't think that should be glossed over. But those library buildings, still standing in towns across the world, are a genuinely good use of what he ultimately chose to build with it.