Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Unavailable
    Hetty: The Genius and Madness of America's First Female Tycoon
    Unavailable
    Hetty: The Genius and Madness of America's First Female Tycoon
    Unavailable
    Hetty: The Genius and Madness of America's First Female Tycoon
    Ebook361 pages5 hours

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

    By Charles Slack

    4/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    When J. P. Morgan called a meeting of New York's financial leaders after the stock market crash of 1907, Hetty Green was the only woman in the room. 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 in an age when women weren't even allowed to vote, never mind concern themselves with interest rates, she lived by her own rules. 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.

    This P.S. edition features an extra 16 pages of insights into the book, including author interviews, recommended reading, and more.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins
    Release dateApr 5, 2011
    ISBN9780062038111
    Unavailable
    Hetty: The Genius and Madness of America's First Female Tycoon
    Author

    Charles Slack

    Charles Slack is the author of Noble Obsession: Charles Goodyear, Thomas Hancock, and the Race to Unlock the Greatest Industrial Secret of the Nineteenth Century, named one of the New York Public Library's twenty-five "Books to Remember" for 2002, and Blue Fairways: Three Months, Sixty Courses, No Mulligans. His writing has appeared in many national magazines. He lives in Connecticut with his wife, Barbara, and their daughters, Natalie and Caroline.

    Read more from Charles Slack

    Related to Hetty

    Related ebooks

    Women's Biographies For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      The Richest Girl In The World

      Aug 12, 2020

      The Richest Girl In The World
      10 min read

    • Article

      Act of Service

      Apr 25, 2023

      Act of Service
      3 min read

    • Article

      The Price Is Not Right

      Jun 26, 2019

      The Price Is Not Right
      6 min read

    • Article

      Why the Flash Crash Really Matters: The debate about what caused the 2010 stock market Flash Crash is missing the point.

      Apr 23, 2015

      At about 2:30pm on May 6, 2010, an asset management firm began executing a series of orders on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. Located in Overland Park, Kansas, Waddell & Reed was (and is) one of the oldest mutual fund companies in America. It follo

      8 min read

    • Article

      A Financial Mastermind

      Oct 20, 2020

      A Financial Mastermind
      8 min read

    • Article

      Portrait Of A Lady

      Feb 11, 2021

      Portrait Of A Lady
      16 min read

    • Article

      Victorian Style Scandal

      Aug 13, 2022

      Tangled Souls: love and scandal among the Victorian aristocracy Jane Dismore The History Press, 2022 pp. 326 Hardback, £20.00; paperback, N/A; (Kindle £12.99) ISBN: 978-0750996624; 0750996625 Imagine: a bright young dashing politician, who thinks hi

      5 min read

    • Article

      The Old Un's Notes

      Feb 8, 2023

      The Old Un's Notes
      4 min read

    • Article

      They Were One-offs

      Apr 6, 2022

      HOW I wish I’d written this book! Matthew Kelly celebrates four women whose work created the organisations and attitudes to conservation we take for granted today. Two are well known, two are not; all their stories enrich us. The well-known two are O

      7 min read

    • Article

      History

      Jun 29, 2022

      History
      11 min read

    • Article

      “Getting Thrilled, Titillated Or Angry At Celebrities Can Change How We Think”

      Mar 19, 2020

      Ellie Cawthorne: You argue in the book that celebrity is a slippery concept. How do you define it? Greg Jenner: When I began writing, I made the foolish assumption that there would be a clear-cut definition of celebrity. But a year-and-a-half later

      7 min read

    • Article

      Michael Henderson on Radio

      Sep 30, 2021

      WE HEAR SO MUCH THESE DAYS about identity, and the conversation is framed in narrow terms designed to keep others out. Shrill voices proclaim membership of religious, ethnic, political, sexual and sporting tribes, as though it comes with a blessing f

      3 min read

    • Article

      Francis Spufford Vividly Recreates an 18th-Century New York in ‘Golden Hill’

      Jul 26, 2018

      Dear Reader, envision that Village which grew upon the southern strand of that isle of Manhattoes: a Lenape settlement purchased for 60 guilders and named for Amsterdam, later to be acquired by gunships of King James, and her wooden-legged governor r

      7 min read

    • Article

      A Special Relationship

      Mar 20, 2024

      A Special Relationship
      5 min read

    • Article

      The Wilde Wild West

      Feb 20, 2024

      The Wilde Wild West
      10 min read

    • Article

      Jonathan Swift vs Taylor Swift

      May 31, 2023

      A N WILSON GK Chesterton said the art of journalism was to interest the readers in the fact that Lady Jones was dead, when they had not previously known that she was alive. It is not impossible that many Oldie-readers have spent the last innocent six

      3 min read

    • Article

      Behind The Fake News

      Dec 27, 2019

      Behind The Fake News
      7 min read

    • Article

      Nostalgia Is What It Used To Be

      Jul 28, 2022

      ON HOLIDAY, I USED TO find Nostalgie FM the perfect accompaniment to a drive through the Loire Valley. A non-stop blend of largely French hits from the sixties to the eighties, it was both a caution against and a potent agent of nostalgia. Most of th

      5 min read

    • Article

      Biography & memoir

      Jun 29, 2022

      Biography & memoir
      13 min read

    • Article

      Theodore Dreiser’s New York

      Oct 26, 2017

      Theodore Dreiser’s New York
      8 min read

    • Article

      The Heir

      Sep 9, 2019

      The Heir
      32 min read

    Reviews for Hetty

    4/5

    27 ratings2 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 4/5
      Amazing story of first female millionaire. Grew up with money and inherited it but also grew it, partly by being extremely thrifty herself to the point of looking like a poor schlep on the streets of NY. And, too boot, She was not a nice person to others.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      Hetty Green was known as The Witch of Wall Street around 1890, as she dressed in shabby old black gowns and outdated bonnets while she saw to her business about New York's financial district. I first read about her in The People's Almanac as a kid and thought she was fascinating, as did every newspaper during her decades as the wealthiest woman in America. She had an amazing business sense, which she gained from her wealthy father, to know when a piece of real estate or a bond would be valuable in the future and to keep her head when the stock market plunged. There were several times when NYC approached and received loans from Hetty Green of over a million dollars to keep public services running.There are many stories about her greed and some are true. She actually did dress herself and her children as paupers to receive free medical attention. Sometimes she was recognized and made to pay the bill, which made her furious. She would haggle with merchants and waiters over charges as low as 15 cents at a time when she owned a railroad and some of the most valuable property on Michigan Ave. She refused to pay for a cab, instead walking miles every day to the bank. And she was suspected of forging her aunt's signature to a will that cut out most of the beneficiaries after the woman's death.The surprises in this book are that Hetty actually did let go of some of her money, giving large anonymous donations to charities and speaking out for the working class. And the full story concerning her son's damaged leg is here.The claim that has been printed so many times- that she allowed the boy's leg to go without medical treatment until it had to be amputated rather than pay a doctor- is untrue. A very interesting read.

      1 person found this helpful