The Richest Woman in America: The Life and Times of Hetty Green by Janet Wallach

The Richest Woman in America: The Life and Times of Hetty Green Reviews

• 
  John Bellamy

  Whatever its peculiar defects—of which more later—there is much to admire about Janet Wallach’s biography of Hetty Green. Firstly, it is highly readable, written in a lively style that successfully evokes its characters and scenes from the past in vivid word-pictures. Secondly, it also triumphs as a true “life and times” of its subject, a narrative in which the amazing Hetty is faithfully placed within the events and culture of her era. Thirdly, and most importantly, Wallach’s book also succeeds as a sharply revisionist portrait of Green, whose previous chroniclers have generally caricaturized her as kind of a shrewish amalgam of greedy Ebenezer Scrooge and a neurotic bag lady. Wallach’s book is, above all, a persuasive argument that Hetty be taken seriously for exactly what she was: an intelligent woman who merely committed the unpardonable sin of succeeding in what was deemed the exclusively male realm of making money. Along the way, Wallach also disposes of most of the malign mythology and second-hand character assassination that has hitherto passed for Hetty Green biography: the slurs that she was an uncaring mother, that she was a social recluse, or that she was habitually attired in rags, that she was unrelentingly ungenerous with her money. Although she is a bit unconvincing in refuting the charge that Hetty forged the signature on her aunt's will . . .
  There are, alas, some egregious factual problems with Wallach’s tome, for which both her publisher and editors—if there were in fact any involved in the issue of her book—should be held at least as responsible as she. Contrary to her assertions, the Erie Canal did not open in 1851 but rather in 1825 (p. 33); the Union did not fire on a Fort Sumter occupied by Confederate forces in April, 1861 (p. 51); there were no New York City newspapers published by either George Hearst or Joseph Pulitzer during the Civil War (p. 51); Fredericksburg was mostly definitely not a Union victory (p. 59), and Jennie Jerome did not marry the Duke of Marlborough (although Wallach later corrects that error on p. 184.). And then there’s the caption to an 1861 photograph of Hetty Green, which informs its viewer that she was then on her way to a dinner party at the home of “former President McKinley.” As McKinley would then have been about 18 and as the relevant narrativetext places her accurately at the home of former president Martin Van Buren, such an error seems almost inexplicable. Perhaps the Nan Talese / Doubleday imprint should follow the example of the auto industry and simply recall this flawed edition of Wallach’s otherwise admirable book and replace it with a corrected version worthy of its considerable merits. I’m only giving this 3 stars but it could have easily gained a fourth without its avoidable deficiencies.
  
  
• 
  Jenny Brown

  This is the most poorly written book I've read this year. Apparently Wallach's publisher saved money by skipping the copyedit. The misuse of language is jarring--for example cowboys in Texas are described as "rustling" cattle in a sentence where the author means herding, not stealing. The sentence structure is clumsy. There are long stretches of writing that read is if they were copied from 19th century newspapers, though there is no attribution.
  
  But far worse are the numerous errors of fact, which make it clear that Ms. Wallach is ignorant of many commonly known facts of 19th century history and daily life.
  
  Early on she describes ambergris as a whale bone product. It isn't. It's a substance found in whale stomachs. Later she lists companies and people active during the Civil war and states that Pulitzer was active as a journalist at the time. He was at the time, in fact, a new immigrant serving in the Union army. He worked as a journalist years later.
  
  There were many other such small, but telling mistakes of historical , which were all the more damning because they could have been easily checked with a single Google query.
  
  For those who might wonder where the author came up with the information in her page, the notes are a dead loss. There are very few citations, and long tracts of text appear without any clue as to where the facts they describe came from.
  
  Given how poor the author's grounding was in simple details of 19th century life, and the lack of decent footnoting, there is no reason to believe that the story told here is accurate. It certainly doesn't tell us anything about how Hetty Green accumulated her great wealth. And though the author dismisses the worst accusation against Green--that her cheapness led to her son's losing his leg, there are no facts to back up this claim either, and the rest of the picture Wallach paints of Green makes her sound like a thoroughly unpleasant person who would be quite capable of doing just that.
  
  I have to say I find it really depressing that a book this poorly written and researched gets the kind of big book treatment it does, when so many far better biographies languish in obscurity without the big advances and heavy promotion this author, mysteriously, commands.
• 
  BAM the enigma

  Audio #141
• 
  Lena

  Two and a half stars, rounded up.
  
  Hetty Green was born into a Quaker whaling family in Massachusetts in the 19th century. Early on, she sought to gain her father's attention by learning as much as she could about the family business. While she didn't succeed in gaining her father's respect during his lifetime, she developed a sharp head for numbers and investments and ultimately transformed her inheritance into a fortune worth an estimated 2 billion in today's dollars.
  
  This book was interesting enough starting out, providing a historical portrait of an intriguing time in America's history and a glimpse into a life of a woman who bucked tradition to participate in the financial world when it was much harder for a woman to do so. Despite the fact that Hetty is the focus of this book, however, I never felt like I got more than a glimpse into who she was. The author attempts to provide a balance of views that were expressed about her - she was stingy, she was generous, she was dowdy, she was fashionable - but this just left me feeling like nobody really had any insight into what Hetty was actually like.
  
  In addition, I was frustrated by the author's treatment of some of the key legal battles in Hetty's life. Hetty contested her aunt's will as fraudulent but the author's coverage of the legal case left me unclear as to whether she had a legitimate claim or was just greedy and litigious.
  
  The book contained enough interesting information that I continued to read it until my library time ran out, but didn't find it compelling enough to bother to finish in that time. If you have a strong interest in the history of the railroads, there may be something of value here, but ultimately it was nowhere near as engaging as I expected a book about such a powerful and groundbreaking woman to be.
• 
  Orinoco Womble (tidy bag and all)

  I've read all I'm going to of this book, about a third of it. If you want a detailed examination of the economic ups and downs of the US in the mid 19th century, you might find it interesting, but as a "biography" of a person it's a total fizzle. After Hetty returns from New York, having rejected the season, she is wheeled in once or twice in every chapter but only as background. The writing style is terrible, overly florid when describing and full of lists of names etc. which saps the already dull narrative of any energy it might possibly have had. What ever happened to editors I wonder. Dry as dust, full of factual and linguistic errors that any editor worth their salary should have caught. I did, and I'm no one in particular. Lincoln is described as "thin and gaunt", as if those words were not two degrees of the same thing. That's just one example.
  
  
• 
  Patricia

  If you're really into financial dealings - the ups and downs of the stock market through history, mortgages, railroads, and other transactions - then you'll probably give this a couple more stars than I did. I think I wanted more of a personal account of Hetty Green. Was warned when the author indicated in the prologue that Hetty had left no diary, no personal papers, and that her life story had been pieced together from newspaper accounts which are admittedly biased or inaccurate. Still, I do enjoy historical fiction, so I skimmed through the financial dealings and gleaned the story of an extremely wealthy, somewhat eccentric woman.
• 
  LibraryCin

  Hetty Green was born in 1834 and, despite being a girl, learned about money and investments from her father (hmm, on reading the blurb, this may not have been where she learned this – at least not directly). She also seemed quite litigious and took offense when inheritances she thought should go to her didn’t. She was a very wealthy woman.
  
  I listened to the audio, and though the narrator didn’t appear to have an accent, she did pronounce some vowels oddly, which distracted me. Combine that with really being kind of boring and I wasn’t impressed. Because of being somewhat boring, I may not have the summary exactly right, as I wasn’t paying attention to parts of the book. And I didn’t particularly like Hetty. In some ways, she was obviously before her time.
• 
  Sarah - All The Book Blog Names Are Taken

  Wavering back and forth between 3 and 4 stars. Interesting read and Hetty Green is fascinating. But there are a few 'facts' that don't make sense, so I wonder how many others may be inaccurate. Full review to come.
  
  ++++++++++++
  
  
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  Rating: 3 Stars
  
  I went back and forth on this one for a while. At times I felt like 4 stars were deserved, but after taking some time away from the book I really can't give it more than three. That reason stems from the fact that there are factual inaccuracies that I noticed and if there are ones that I noticed, it is usually safe to say there were others I did not know were inaccurate, because I do not have as much knowledge of Hetty as I do of her contemporaries.
  
  The biggest thing that stood out to me was the on page 173. There it was stated that McKinley was in the White House in 1896. But previously in the photo section, the was a picture with the caption stating that she was 26 and on her way to a dinner party at the home of former President McKinley. Yet, Hetty could not have been 26 and McKinley a former president at the same time. Hetty was born in 1834 and died in 1916. McKinley began his term in 1897 and was assassinated in 1901. He never had the chance to be a former president because he was killed while in his second term. It makes me wonder which former president she was actually visiting, and how such an obvious and glaring mistake could have escaped the attention of editors. To some this may not seem like a big deal, but as someone who reads non-fiction almost exclusively, it is huge. I have thought about this a long time, thinking perhaps I am the one who is in error, but I don't think that is the case. And if something so easy to fact-check is wrong, how many other errors are there that are not as obvious and may be accepted as truth?
  
  While the issue above is huge for me, that is not to say this book was awful. One thing the author did very well, that I appreciated, was that it was just as much about the time that Hetty lived, as Hetty herself. I appreciated this because it really set the tone for the story and painted the backdrop of New York in the Gilded Age. I can see how some would not like that as much as I do, especially those looking for a biography solely of Hetty. But to understand her, you have to understand her era and why she was unique and worthy of future generations knowing who she was.
  
  As for Hetty herself, what a character. Her childhood was not one that anyone would want. Her parents did not want her, as she was not the boy they longed for. Her dad was just such a jerk, but again, the mentality fit with the times. Hetty learned early on that the only way she was going to prove her worth was to amass a fortune based on the investing rules set out by her father. Hetty followed those rules exactly and grew her own fortune very quickly. She was very independent and did not follow the rules that everyone else on Wall Street seemed to. When people were panicking and selling, Hetty stayed calm and bought more and more shares. She was intelligent and capable of managing her money, even when her own husband made several bad decisions and investments - using some of the very money that Hetty worked so hard to earn. While they never divorced, Hetty kicked him to the curb for a time, though they remained friends and close in their old age.
  
  Hetty was fiercely independent and did not care one iota about what the newspapers said about her or society, for that matter. She cared about the money she made and ensuring that her children were taken care of after her death. But unfortunately her two children had no heirs of their own and the great fortune (estimated at $2.5 billion today) she worked so hard to amass was divided as her will stipulated.
  
  One of my favorite quotes came at the very end of the book, the last paragraph in fact. It sums up Hetty quite perfectly:
  
  "Hetty Green's money is long gone, and with it, her fame. what remains is her legacy: a woman who stood her ground, who defied the crowd and refused to follow its whims. Making her way in a hostile male world, she was never hesitant to look a man in the eye, never reluctant to say what she thought, never afraid to act as she saw fit" (page 228).
  
  Following the main text of the book was a section called 'The Wisdom of Hetty Green', which includes some of the rules of money-making that she followed, and her general thoughts on investments, deals, etc. I found these interesting and a good addition to the text. Some were scattered throughout the text itself but it was nice to have them all in one place, quotes that could be directly attributed to Hetty.
  
  The Gilded Age and New York are endlessly fascinating to me. It was refreshing to read about Green, when I have read so much already about the Rockefellers, Vanderbilts, Astors, Morgans and so on. My concern of course is the accuracy of the facts presented, given the glaring inaccuracy about McKinley. However, she is a worthy subject and I will be looking for more information about her. Give this one a try, but be cautious.
• 
  Feisty Harriet

  Meh, not great.
• 
  thewanderingjew

  Hettie (alternately Hetty) Green was born into a family that rejected her. Her father, convinced that he was having a son, was terribly disappointed. When his son was born, 9 months later, only to die, he was bereft, as was her mother. She was further rejected and was sent to live with her grandfather.
  Hettie had a very strict and rigid Quaker upbringing, and she learned the lessons well, exhibiting the values and standards of the Friends, for most of her life. She was frugal, moral and honest, if not always kind, in the way she lived and conducted her affairs. She remained a Quaker until very late in her life when she converted, was baptized, became an Episcopalian like her husband, and was buried next to him.
  She worked hard to gain the love and respect of her father and did succeed, eventually. She found it easy to make money. Her philosophy worked. She was bright and she proved herself worthy of taking over the family business, at a time, in the mid 1800’s, when there were few rights for women and fewer men who gave them the respect that was due an intelligent, accomplished woman, who was expected to do nothing more than shop, embroider, conduct social affairs, and matters of the home. Business skills were unnecessary and thought of as inappropriate for females.
  Hettie, however, rose to become a powerful businesswoman with great influence on everything she undertook. Although her business prowess was admired, she was often mocked for it, even though a man with the same skills and success would have been praised for his acumen.
  As a young girl, in order to find a suitor, her aunt enrolled her at a fine school for dance, in Sandwich, a town in Cape Cod, MA. There she learned proper decorum and how to conduct herself with grace and charm. However, she was often portrayed as disheveled, never really concerned with vanity or appearance. She was educated intellectually at Friend’s Academy, a Quaker school, where her father’s financial and moral lessons were enhanced.
  Hettie married Edward Green, a man of considerable reputation and wealth. They lived in England for several years and Hettie bore two children, Ned and Sylvia. Both her father and her aunt, who stepped in after the death of her mother, and with whom she was extraordinarily close, disappointed her by not trusting her to take care of her own money, leaving their estates in a trust for her, instead, despite the fact that she had proven herself far more capable than many a man. She had hoped for and, indeed, they had promised, to provide her with financial freedom.
  Hettie’s life was a roller coaster of financial investments in stocks, railroads, property, and mortgages; marital concerns, social engagements, lawsuits, grudges and revenge. The road she traveled was often bumpy, but her indomitable spirit carried her onward to become the most prominent and wealthy woman of her time, withstanding all the arrows of that period.
  She lived during a century of trauma, the Civil War was raging, she witnessed history with the birth of The Emancipation Proclamation, the writings of Karl Marx, bank failures, stock market crashes, (sounds like today!) the beginnings of the woman’s suffrage movement, the demand for equality, an end to slavery, and even the assassination of two Presidents, Lincoln and McKinley. In a man’s world, she was far more successful than men! She survived each crisis on top of the heap.
  Her father foresaw the end of the whale oil market, he saw the coming age of railroads, he was an astute businessman and investor, and Hettie took after him. However, she was always a penny-pincher until the end, always given to plain taste in clothing and lifestyle, not very interested in charity, but always interested in making more money.
  Always remembering how she was given short shrift in the wills of her family, she wanted to make sure her own children were well provided for and could be independent. She succeeded. She held sway over their choices and decisions without mercy, and as a result, Sylvia did not marry until the age of 38, and Ned kept company with someone for years that his mother would not accept, whom she called Miss Harlot instead of Miss Harlow.
  Hettie was nothing, if not outspoken. As a result of her interference, neither child produced an heir to either carry on the name or inherit the fortune. It was doled out piecemeal to many beneficiaries, and the Robinson/Greene family dynasty died with the death of her children.
  A remarkable woman, whose main interest was simply making money (and she sure made a lot of it before she “shuffled off this mortal coil”, at the age of 82, as the richest woman in America), comes to life and lives on in the pages of this book, thanks to the research and very authentic presentation of her, by Janet Wallach, the author.
• 
  Erika

  Hetty Green lived her life the way she wanted, not the way other people expected her to. She tricked men who tried to trick her. She had a head for numbers. She was kind, smart, and funny. She seems to have done a pretty good job with the hand she was dealt in life as a child.
• 
  George

  INTERESTING, INSIGHTFUL AND INSTRUCTIVE.
  
  “To New Englanders of every sort, prosperity was a virtue.”—page 17
  
  Hetty Howland Robinson Green (1835-1916) was my kind of gal—smart, frugal, tough-minded, strong-willed, and wealthy—whose rock-solid Yankee New England values and ethics might have closely paralleled my own.
  
  Perhaps growing up a mere fifteen miles and a brief century removed from Hetty’s origins [New Bedford, Massachusetts], bore some influence in that regard. I hope so. It pleases me to think that some of the ‘old fashioned’ Yankee—‘waste not, want not’—wisdom might have survived and been appreciated for at least that many decades. Would that that appreciation might return.
  
  Although I was raised in the area, Janet Wallach’s book, ‘The Richest Woman in America: The Life and Times of Hetty Green,’ still offered up at least a couple of surprises about New Bedford, for me.
  
  First, I was totally unaware of the significant influence of the Quaker community in New Bedford commerce, i.e. whaling, shipping, finance and textile. In fact I was virtually unaware that there even was a Quaker community in New Bedford. Congregationalist and Catholics galore, but not Quakers.
  
  Second surprise, “[in 1857] …whaling reached its peak, with more ships, more capital, and more sailors than ever, making New Bedford the richest city per capita in the world.”—page 55. I have a difficult time getting my mind around the idea of New Bedford, or any other cities in the area, ever having been “the richest city per capita in the world.” Perhaps I’d better read ‘Moby Dick,’ after all.
  
  Recommendation: This is a good—interesting, insightful and instructive—biography, especially for the economically conservative (i.e. skinflints and tightwads) among us.
  
  “American children are not taught how to save money but how to spend it. Everything they want—give it to them so long as you know the price of the credit. That’s the policy of the modern mother and she is raising a nation of spendthrifts whose one thought is to get what they want when they want it.”—page 228
  
  “Watch your pennies and the dollars will take care of themselves.”—page 251
  
  Adobe Digital Editions [ePub], 289 pages,
  on loan from
  http://overdrive.colapublib.org/
  
• 
  Doreen

  This book rates a 3.5 at least, but I just couldn't give it a 4. It is a biography only by the broadest interpretation of the word. I expect a biography to provide information centered on a person's private life, profession, accomplishments, adventures, etc. And though a biography may contain peripheral people and events, I expect the majority of the book to relate directly to the biographee. That is not how this book is written.
  
  Hetty was a private person, not a flashy attention-seeker, so there is a limit on what is known from her private life and about her personality. A savvy, independent businesswoman, she lived a life without the expensive trimmings associated with wealth. She was frugal to the point of appearing miserly. Yes, the author includes interviews and pieces of articles from newspapers, but the book lacks intimacy. And while I did enjoy the book, I feel that the title is inaccurate.
  
  The great value of this book is its stellar account of the ever-changing economic climate in America from the mid-eighteenth century through the first two decades of the nineteenth century. The development of the country's expansive railways, its exportation of domestic products, and the intricacies of a 'young' Wall Street are all charted in this book. It's an excellent description of finance in America, as it struggled to find its way. A gold standard, a silver standard, printed currency,etc. Europe watched as America took painful, tentative steps to establish itself as a financially sound society being measured against the old, established countries of Europe.
  
  The book's strength is in its detailed, historical rendering of an exciting time in American history. As for Hetty, her work ethic, frugality, idiosyncrasies and litigious spirit serve to make the reading entertaining, instead of just informative. She's right. "Watch your pennies and the dollars will take care of themselves."
  
  
  
  
  
  
• 
  Ash

  I enjoyed the information about Hetty Green. She drew the disdain of her father and the ambivalence of her Quaker mother because she wasn't born a male. Due to her that neglect she was angry and acted out. However, she had an aptitude for finance and because of that, she gained the respect of her father and grandfather.
  
  Throughout her life, she went through constant battles including enduring countless court dates contesting the will of her aunt's will, her husband philandering ways, her son's deteriorating leg condition, her daughter's solitude, and her growing paranoia on her enemies trying to poison her. Despite of all that, Hetty was on top financially. Her rules to success are tried and true: buy when others are selling, sell when others are buying, invest in land, live way below your needs. Indeed, Hetty Green was the richest miserly woman in America in the Gilded Age.
  
  Had that been the entire novel, with sprinkles of the culture on New York through the Gilded Age, Wallach would have succeeded wonderfully and this would have been a four starred review easy! However, Wallach stuffed it with useless information about real estate, debutant life, and the allegorical meaning of Baum's The Wizard of Oz. Some of the information was very interesting and if Wallach wants to pen a novel about New York's Gilded Age, I would read it.
  
  I suspect the reason Wallach went off on random verbose tangents is because there really isn't information on Hetty Green. I tried looking up information and I found three reputable sites with the same information. That explains why she would rephrase Hetty Green's rules 70 times within a chapter. It must have been tough for her to come up with with the recommended page count with such scant information on the source material. I can't fault Wallach. She did the best she could but I can't forgive her either.
• 
  Lori

  Started this book with high hopes since it was by the wonderful author of the Desert Queen, Janet Wallach. Wallach has ability to paint picture of the times she is writing about so vividly that they come feel very real as one reads or listens. Unfortunately, this AudioBook, (this version that ran about 8 & 1/2 hours long), was narrated by what I thought at times was a robot trying to express empathy. Actually I think Siri, the iphone voice would have done a better job. It was Maddening to try to listen with that dreadful mechanical sounding cadence droning out each sentence.
  A Good AudioBook is one where the narration fits the prose and one doesn't think about the narrator but is immersed in the story. This story of Hetty Green, is quite interesting and history lesson of the times she lived, but I kept thinking about the narration. At one point I was certain that the download was speeded up to 2x playback cause she talked so fast. Doubled checked on this, realized it was the narration. Seriously this ranks as the #3 worse narrations of all the audiobooks I've ever listened to (the worse being Moby Dick narrated by Burt Reynolds) and there have been Thousands. I have only started listing some of the books I read/listen-to in the last year at Goodreads.
  This review's content thus far proves my point, when one spends more time commenting on the narration and not the content of the book, there IS a problem.
  Nonetheless, it is interesting, not as much as Wallach's book on Gertrude Bell, but interesting, just don't get the Audio-Version unless you are a robot.
• 
  Holly

  Every listening session I found myself drifting away from the narrative and having to yank my focus back to attention ... then five minutes later it would happen again. This grew exhausting and a little worrisome (what was wrong with me?). But I got behind the wheel one evening during that week and to my surprise was immediately caught up in a "Selected Shorts" story in medias res. So I determined that it wasn't my listening that was entirely to blame: at the start of each section/chapter (and perhaps when she returned from breaks) the reader, Coleen Marlo, seemed lively and focused, and then her attention would drop off after a few minutes - when she got into a "groove." The text's words became phonemes and she wasn't thinking about the story. This is the first audiobook I've listened to in which I thought the reader wasn't paying attention to the words she was reading.
• 
  Joshua

  There's a couple of things bad about this book. It is called "the life and TIMES of Hettie Green" for good reason, and while some of the background was relevant, I found myself skimming the summary of world events at the beginning of every chapter. It's also clear that Wallach chooses Green's side, without really exploring what made people dislike her. Was it just sexism? I would have appreciated a chapter dedicated to trying to sort it out. Finally, for a history book I am kind of shocked there are no foot or end notes, or even citations. It leaves you wondering if the dialogue is pure fiction or if it's all from sources - which ones I guess you'd have to figure out for yourself. It's not a bad book, but it feels like Wallach was trying to pad the page count with filler, which makes for dull reading when you're hoping to learn more about the woman than her times.
• 
  Connor

  One of the worst books I've had the displeasure of reading
• 
  Angie

  I had never heard of Hetty Green, and I found her intriguing. She was extremely successful as a financier at a time when the field was dominated by men. She was a sharp investor who did her homework. She believed in good causes and helping the middle class. And of course, she also seemed a little paranoid and had a habit of dressing down. She was covered often in the press, but many people didn't know what she looked like. Today it would be much harder for her to fool the public.
  
  Her practical advice included don't speculate and don't borrow.
  
  I also learned that economic meltdowns are very common and can repeatedly be traced to the same causes.
• 
  Wendy

  I really enjoyed this biography about the richest woman in America. It's surprising how much Hetty Green did for this country and the city of New York, yet she isn't talked about in history books much, if at all. She saved the City of New York from bankruptcy several times, grew the railroads more than other railroad magnates, and accumulated more wealth than most of the country's leaders of the time. Her eccentric ways earned her a reputation as the "witch of Wall Street" but she was certainly a brilliant woman. I would love to read more about the more personal side of Hetty.
• 
  Holli

  Well written in narrative style. Great at giving context to the times and providing hilarious vignettes into Hetty's life. I am starting to be fascinated by the Gilded Age and it's interesting to me how some names ie Vanderbilt, Morgan, Astor, have stuck with us and others like Green have been lost. By all accounts, she was famous in her day but I imagine she wasn't sensational enough for dramatisations to be made about her. I enjoyed the end with the "wisdom of Hetty Green" too.
• 
  Ed Thereault

  The book feels incomplete, more like an outline or a synopsis of a much richer story. The sprinkling of gilded age luminaries, social customs, and institutions, (the metropolitan museum, the Waldorf Astoria, shops and restaurants, etc) was the kind of information spouted by docents in the Newport Mansions and historical societies.
  
  In short, the book is not bad, it is just superficial.
• 
  Clara

  I had hoped to learn more about Hetty the person, but most of the book is about the gilded age -- sort of a mishmash of facts (?) about railroads, financial booms & busts, real estate, even the Wizard of Oz, but very little new about Hetty, except some about her final years. I was disappointed.
• 
  Kyla

  Though I thought it was going to be more centered around her private life, it was a really good book filled with an immense amount of details and facts about Hetty Green's life
• 
  Anne

  I just learned about Hetty Green last year when I was staying near Bellows Falls, VT where she lived. Who knew? I am interested to find out more about her.
• 
  Maggie

  I listened to the audiobook version. I didn't really care for the reader. Her manner of speaking was very halted and choppy, which was distracting.
  
  The author did a good job informing the reader that Hetty Green was a force with which to be reckoned. I really enjoyed learning more about her personality, her Quaker roots, and her New England families. I find it interesting to read biographies where one's childhood and background heavily influence the subject's later life, in a way that results in success. I wish the author had told me more about that part of her life, and that of her parents and aunt. I also wish she had told more about her relationship with her husband -- their marriage ended up not being very happy, and the author only skimmed over the reasons why. (In the author's defense, Hetty was a very private person, so perhaps there is simply no historical evidence which provides any details about the estrangement between them. But I like a little Gilded Age juiciness -- who were these other women? Even rumors would have been interesting.)
  
  I could have done without the information about her financial life, but that is just me -- I don't find the world of finance interesting. And with a person like Hetty Green, separating her personal life from her finances is antithetical to any biography of her. Perhaps a better explanation of what exactly was going on in these financial transactions and her plans to increase her wealth would have helped me be more invested (no pun intended) in that part of her life. Rather than telling me that she loaned millions to the city of New York, tell me why she decided to do so, and what kind of profit she received when that deal came to an end. Rather than telling me she bought railroads in Texas, tell me why she did so. What kind of research did she do before investing in a company? What did she look for when deciding what to invest in? Other than selling high and buying low, this is never discussed in the book.
  
  Speaking of financial matters, I was surprised that the 2008 recession was referenced several times in the book. It felt misplaced, forced, and almost as if it has been the only financial crisis our country has seen since Hetty's day. If you're trying to put the Gilded Age economic rollercoaster in the context of American financial history as a whole, how on Earth do you do that without once mentioning the Great Depression? Or the junk bond events of the 1980s? Or the inflation of the 1970s?
  
  I was also very surprised that the epilogue didn't include any information about what happened to her children after she passed away. Based on my admittedly vague previous knowledge of Hetty Green, I believe neither her son nor her daughter had any children, so her entire fortune ultimately went to various charities after their deaths. The book is not clear on this. How many generations had cared for this fortune before the family line ended? How did Hetty feel about this? Was she aware that her restrictions on her children's marriages played a large role in her family tree coming to an end, and therefore, her family's fortune? Did she regret this? Why did her will stipulate that her money be given to the organizations listed in the book? There is no context provided.
  
  While the author is a good writer and clearly did a lot of research, I feel she could have done more with this book. I appreciate the deeper understanding of Hetty's New England roots, but this biography only skimmed the surface of most of her life. I will look for others which delve more deeply.
• 
  John

  I remember seeing an old copy of the book of world records had categories for richest people. In it, in addition to the richest man at the time was also an entry for Hetty Green under "World's Greatest Miser". It was brutally unflattering. It said things like she would eat her oatmeal cold because she didn't want to pay for the heat and that her son lost her leg because she didn't want to pay for the doctor.
  
  So, when looking for audiobooks for a vacation drive at the library, imagine my surprise when my wife finds a biography of her, and moreover the description on the back seems quite sympathetic, even favorable. Upon listening, it becomes clear that what we have in this book is a full-bore attempt at restoration.
  
  This restoration makes for an enjoyable audiobook. It's told with very clear voice at a brisk speed that carries one along with the events, but by no means is too fast for easy comprehension. Hetty's quotes are rendered in a New England accent that stands out as different, but is no less crisp and clear. It's told with enough personality as to give the narrative some feeling, but not so much as to call attention to the acting away from the text.
  
  I'll admit I didn't quite finish the story as the trip ended before the book did. From what I heard from this book, it does give a different perspective on events. As a specific example, although she did turn away the doctor in examining the son's leg, she had received informal medical training and had convinced herself she had already set the injury correctly. More generally, we observed that her spare Quaker upbringing and the key role of male figures in her childhood had given her a distaste for indulgence and an interest in business affairs.
  
  The description of her childhood were not particularly pleasant, but once her youth was behind her, I enjoyed the clever financial dealings with the background of historical events. It's interesting to see the Civil War and Gilded Age rendered from a financial perspective, but also at a personal scale. The press was not kind to Hetty Green, but the book presents that she lived the life she wanted to live in spite of that, at a time in which no other women participated in a financial life to nearly the same degree. She may not have been a heroine at anything other than being smart and being herself, but that alone is a terrific achievement for all the BS (and lawsuits) she had to take.
  
  It may be that this book presents an all-too-flattering portrait; a bit of the pendulum swinging too far the other way. Other reviews question historical details. However, if you don't pay any of that too much mind, it's an enjoyable listen.
  
  Overall, it's clear that the record books should have placed her under "Richest Woman", no matter how she chose to live her life, as that is what she achieved.
• 
  Frode

  The Richest Woman in America by Janet Wallach is about Hetty Green, a girl from a Quaker background who inherited some of her dad’s money and some of her aunt’s estate. Hetty’s dad made lots of his money in shipping, some of it with whalers out of New Bedford. The author likens Hetty to Ishmael in Moby Dick. It is an interesting comparison.
  
  The book has lots of documentation; it is evident that the author did her research and had help doing so. Hetty was a public figure but produced no memoir of her own, so quotes and anecdotes are from newspapers and court proceedings and biographies of others who interacted with Hetty. She was an interesting character, quite private about her life, going by various names at times, and keeping many of her deals as private as possible. She was obviously quite shrewd in her business dealings and gained the respect and sometimes ire of many businessmen of her day. Hetty was referred to as the Witch of Wall Street by some.
  
  The book is really a period piece with much verbiage spent on the doings and furnishings of the rich in New York during period the book covers, mostly from the period we refer to now as the Gilded Age. There were booms and busts in the markets; railroads were major investments that rose and fell with the times and made many rich and turned many into paupers. The book speaks about these times and how Hetty Green navigated them. Some of her maxims are repeated in the book, and one or two are pointed out as very similar to quotes from Warren Buffet. She attributed her success to common sense, but she was a student of companies, read the papers and did her research before making a monetary move. She gives a set of rules to her son, and they are recorded in the book.
  
  Her personal life was difficult as a child. Her relationships with her mom and dad and aunt were strained as a child. As she grew, she became closer to her dad as he began to teach her about business. She had a ready mind and liked numbers and made sense of accounting reports. She married E. H. Green and bore him a son and daughter. Later in life they lived apart but were still friends and spent much time together. Hetty was practical in all her dealings, but she had spunk and was a bit of a wit. One incident was a chuckle for me. The Prince of Wales was visiting and at a dance which Hetty attended. As they began to dance, he said, “I am the Prince of Wales.” She responded with, “I am the Princess of Whales.”
  
  I liked the book. It was informative about the period and opened a window on a woman who became the richest woman in America at the time. It was not a page turner, but it held my interest.