The Richest Woman in America
Hetty Green in the Gilded Age
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- $15.99
Publisher Description
No woman in the Gilded Age made as much money as Hetty Green. Now the acclaimed author of Desert Queen delivers the definitive biography of America’s first female tycoon, “an investment pioneer who matched her male counterparts in ambition and guile, and never backed down from a fight…. Filled with colorful historical details of an economic time that eerily parallels our own.” —San Francisco Chronicle
Hetty Green was a strong woman who forged her own path, she was worth at least $100 million by the end of her life in 1916—equal to about $2.5 billion today.
Green was mocked for her simple Quaker ways and her unfashionable frugality in an era of opulence and excess; the press even nicknamed her “The Witch of Wall Street.” But those who knew her admired her wit and wisdom, and while financiers around her rose and fell as financial bubbles burst, she steadily amassed a fortune that supported businesses, churches, municipalities, and even the city of New York.
Janet Wallach’s engrossing biography reveals striking parallels between past financial crises and current recession woes, and speaks not only to history buffs but to today’s investors, who just might learn a thing or two from Hetty Green.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Hetty Robinson Green (1834 1916) was as rich as Rockefeller, worth $100 million at her death. Born to an emotionally withholding Quaker family that instilled in her the value of both wealth and thrift, she grew her inheritance into a massive fortune through shrewd investments in greenbacks, struggling railroads, and real estate. Wallach (Desert Queen: The Extraordinary Life of Gertrude Bell) makes a strong case that Green's Quaker family valued financial shrewdness over physical affection, shaping their daughter into a supremely confident woman who overruled her husband's and children's desires for independence and sued business adversaries as a matter of course. Green also defied expectations of a wealthy woman, dressing, eating, and living simply according to her "starched New England values." Wallach's enjoyable account encourages admiration for Green's cheekiness in the face of straitlaced bankers but strains to portray Green as a doting mother and the occasional good friend since her strict frugality and money-related eccentricities required significant compromises from those around her. Still, the author successfully portrays a compelling woman who kept her eyes on the glittering financial prize, using a commonsense philosophy regarding real estate and investment throughout the 19th century's Wall Street roller-coaster.
