Hetty: The Genius and Madness of America's First Female Tycoon
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About this ebook
This P.S. edition features an extra 16 pages of insights into the book, including author interviews, recommended reading, and more.
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.
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Reviews for Hetty
27 ratings2 reviews
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Amazing 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
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Hetty Green was known as The Witch of Wall Street around 1890, as she dressed in shabby old black gowns and outdated bonnets while she saw to her business about New York's financial district.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