The Richest Woman in America: Hetty Green in the Gilded Age by Janet Wallach. “It is the duty of every woman to take care of her own business affairs.” I am currently assisting two women who have taken Hetty Green’s advice to heart. They have shown great interest in managing their family accounts and have learned the basics of budgeting, asset allocation, and growing one’s net worth. No one in her time did this better than Hetty Green, the heiress of a large whaling company in the mid-1800s, she learned the family business from her father, recognized the right time to shift to railroads, and thrived for fifty years in the male-dominated field of finance. At her death in 1916, she was worth at least $100 million, more than $2 billion today.
Wallach’s biography of Hetty follows her struggle growing up in a dysfunctional and bickering Quaker family in New Bedford, MA through her legal battles with both her father’s and aunt’s estate attorneys and to her successes as a pioneering financier while also being a wife and mother. But she also goes beyond Hetty’s life to describe the changes in American industry, the social activities and styles of the rich in New York and Newport, and the frequent financial panics and euphoria of the late 19th century, with commentary about its similarity to today’s situation.
Hetty’s optimism in America, her ideas on frugality and generosity, and especially her never-flinching efforts to get the best deal, whether it was buying a skirt or an entire company, would well serve my friends and anyone considering personal finance, especially for young girls attempting pioneering moves into new fields.
The best biographies leave me wanting to meet not only the subject of the work, but the creator also. The tremendous amount of research that Wallach put into studying a woman who did not leave behind any diaries or correspondence is fascinating on its own.
For all my previous “books of the year” lists, see my dedicated page for these titles.
The unset alarm clock 
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