Hetty: The Genius and Madness of America's First Female Tycoon

By Charles Slack

Book Overview

"Wonderfully detailed....Today's vilified moguls look like pussycats compared with Hetty." --Forbes

A biography of the "Witch of Wall Street," who amassed a fortune of $100 million before women had the right to vote

A full century before Oprah and Martha Stewart became icons of female entrepreneurship, there was Hetty Green, America's richest woman, who stood alone among the roguish giants of the Gilded Age. The Guinness Book of World Records memorialized her as the World's Greatest Miser, and, indeed, this unlikely robber baron--who parlayed a comfortable inheritance into a fortune that was worth about 1.6 billion in today's dollars--was frugal to a fault. But she lived by her own rules, buying and selling real estate and railroads, fighting hard and sometimes dirty, and amassing cash reserves to rival the great banks. In Hetty, Charles Slack reexamines her life and legacy, giving us, at long last, a splendidly "nuanced portrait" (Newsweek) of one of the greatest--and most eccentric--financiers in American history.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0060542578
• ISBN13: 9780060542573
• Release Date: November 2005
• Publisher: Ecco Press
• Length: 288 Pages
• Weight: 1.03 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.4" x 8.1"

Customer Reviews

A good read

Slack has given us the first cut of a remarkable life. How many biographies exist for John Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie, Jay Gould and the others? This book opens up a whole new unexplored territory. Stack provides a platform for future biographers and their field is fertile. Why was Hettie forgotten? Was it lack of self-memorialization in libraries and museums? Wrong gender? No progeny to carry the name/flame? No Newport mansion for tourists to visit? What made her tick? The distant father? The need to succeed/prove? Protestant ethic? Loneliness? What of Mr. Green, a man so adventurous in early life? How did he FEEL when his wife so publically demonstrated her financial independance (in Victorian America)? What did he do in the years following this.. and how did he relate to his children? What of the son who honors his mother in public, leaves Texas to assist her, but marries Mable "Harlot" so soon after his mother's death. Why has this not been a DocumDrama already?

I LOVED THIS BOOK!! A MUST READ...INCREDIBLE BIOGRAPHY

I would make this book required reading for students of American History. One single page can interest the reader to do more research. For instance, the whaling industry in the 1830's, historical homes to visit, a view of Wall Street so long ago... The writing is excellent and I am an avid reader of biographies. I am also a daughter of a Wall Street stock broker. I had heard of the infamous Hetty Green; the "Witch of Wall Street". And to think.. someone finally wrote a book...WOW! I grabbed the book off the shelf at Barnes & Noble and was not dissappointed. Excellent writing. So well written.. Three cheers for the author. I am grateful that somone wrote a book on this incredible woman. Now I know more about her. Facinating...

More genius than mad

Hetty Green was an outsider, a woman in the man's world of Wall Street in the latter 19th and early 20th centuries who was estimated to be worth $100m at the time of her death, or over $1.5bn in today's money. Hetty became incredibly wealthy by following the "buy low, sell high" rule ruthlessly in real estate, bonds, and stocks. She is remembered as a miser, pedant, and grouch but this reflects the prevailing attitude of the times, where a woman doing the "dirty" work of investing and wealth creation was generally looked down upon. This short and tidy synopsis of Hetty's life and times makes for great reading, covering the period 1830 to around 1920. The book seems very balanced, finding much good to say about Hetty but she is not idolized and her rough demeanor and pushy personality are evident. After reading this, I am convinced that Warren Buffett would have found her a very tough competitor.