"Steven Watts has published a number of biographies on popular figures- The Magic Kingdom- Walt Disney and the American Way of Life, Mr. Playboy- Hugh Hefner and the American Dream, and The People’s Tycoon- Henry Ford and the American Century, which was chosen as one of five finalists for the 2005 Los Angeles Times Book Award in biography. He teaches history at the University of Missouri."
"An insightful and comprehensive new biography." —The Economist
"[A] penetrating biography...Watts’s lucid prose and shrewd
analysis gives us an absorbing portrait of Carnegie and the America
he both reflected and shaped." —Publisher's Weekly (Starred
Review)
“Henry Ford, Walt Disney, Hugh Hefner, and now Dale Carnegie.
Steven Watts is the Plutarch of American modernity.” —Robert
Westbrook, author of John Dewey and American Democracy
“Self-Help Messiah is carefully researched and
vigorously written, a pleasure to read and ponder. Don't
miss it!” —Jackson Lears, author of Rebirth of a Nation: The
Making of Modern America, 1877-1920
“Steven Watts’s Self-Help Messiah is a fantastic
page turner about the complicated pop guru of the American Positive
Thinking Movement. Dale Carnegie was a master marketeer and common
sense philosopher. This first rate biography does the legend
justice. Highly recommended.” —Douglas Brinkley, author
of Cronkite
"Compelling...Watts captures a momentous period of change in
America and makes a forceful case for Carnegie's significance in
it." —Barnes & Noble Revicews
[Steven Watts's] descriptions...are poignant. Watts shows how
particularly attuned Carnegie was to the psychological needs of
Americans beaten down by the Great Depression, who needed to hear
that positive thinking would garner positive results." —NPR, Fresh
Air
"A fascinating portrait of the father of self-help and incisive
analysis of the mercurial era that produced him." —Kirkus
Reviews
"Watts...is an astute analyst of his subject’s life and
times." —Washington Post
"Watts captures a momentous period of change in America and makes a
forceful case for Carnegie's significance in it." —The
Christian Science Monitor
“A…fine new biography” —Harper’s
“[Watts] paints a fascinating picture of a man who ‘struggled to
accommodate his yearning for affluence with a genuine respect for
moral virtues’ and whose story ‘is, in essence, the story of
America itself in a dynamic era of change.’” —City Journal
"[Self-Help Messiah] should be required reading for anyone
concerned by the ongoing drift from what had been a republic of
individual citizens downward into a class-defined
social-nationalist state that would have appalled Kafka and
Orwell...[Watts] does a masterful job of weaving
in Carnegie’s impact on the lives of individuals being tossed
by the waves of industrialization, urbanization and mass media that
dominated the last century and this." —Washington Times
"[Watts] weaves a very compelling and readable story about the
human spirit and the psychological needs of a whole generation who
were desperate to believe positive thinking and self-development
would create a new and brighter future." —Waterloo Region
Record
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