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

“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.

A full century before Martha Stewart, Oprah, and Madonna became icons, generations before women swept through Wall Street, and decades before they even had the right to vote, there was Hetty Green, America's richest woman, who stood alone among the roguish giants of the Gilded Age as the first lady of capitalism and is remembered as the Witch of Wall Street.

At the time of her death in 1916, Hetty Green's personal fortune was estimated at $100 million ($1.6 billion today), and the financial empire she built on real estate and railroads rivaled that of Andrew Carnegie, Jay Gould, J. P. Morgan, John D. Rockefeller, and some of the nation's biggest banks. Today, Hetty Green ranks near the top of America's list of greatest financiers, in company with Microsoft founder Bill Gates and billionaire-investor Warren Buffett. But in history books she has remained merely a footnote, a miser and an eccentric, whose character flaws and personal choices unjustly overshadowed her remarkable accomplishments on the fierce battlefield of American industry and commerce.

In Hetty, Charles Slack reexamines the life, work, and conflicted legacy of the exceptionally resourceful, ruthless, and inimitable woman who turned a comfortable inheritance into a fortune through instinct, courage, cunning, greed, and determination to succeed at a man's game on her own terms: from her childhood in the Quaker community of New Bedford, Massachusetts, where she learned about business by reading financial papers to her father, to the battle over her inheritance that was one of the most controversial legal cases of her time; from her collisions with railroad magnate Collis Huntington to her rescue of New York City from financial ruin.

Looking well beyond the lore and historical prejudices, Charles Slack presents a full portrait of a true American original, a female Citizen Kane who, having turned away from the conventions of her time, as a woman, a wife, a mother, and a mogul, led a life of a different sort, with occasionally tragic results, becoming both a hero and a victim of her era. Above all, it is a story of an uncompromising, larger-than-life, flawed woman who ruled a vast financial empire but was known, simply, as Hetty.

“Charles Slack has written an enormously readable book about a brilliant, avaricious, and complicated woman who accumulated vast wealth and bested some of Wall Street’s most notable players. The story of her life is a fascinating snapshot of how greed and ambition provided unique success in an era not known for female financial accomplishment.” - Arthur Levitt, former chairman of the SEC, and bestselling author of Take on the Street: What Wall Street and Corporate America Don't Want You to Know

“Want to be a tycoon? Hetty, Charles Slack’s riveting history of America’s pioneering billionairess, tells you how. As a cautionary tale of Hetty Green’s iconoclastic, emotionally pinched life, and an inspiring one of an early 20th century woman tougher than any man, Hetty is a must read for all aspiring moguls.” - Regina E. Herzlinger, Harvard Business School

“Slack concentrates on telling a good story and telling it well.... [An] entertaining biography.” - Publishers Weekly

“Fascinating.” - Tucson Citizen

“[An] instructive account…. Slack offers an exemplary retelling for a new generation.” - Kirkus Reviews

“A lively and engaging portrait of the 19th century’s Martha Stewart…. This detailed account will no doubt delight readers of 19th-century financial history and anyone who likes a good story.” - Library Journal

“A fascinating book.” - New York Post

“This book is more than the story of an eccentric, driven woman; it is a window on the country between the Civil War and World War I when great fortunes were made — even by a woman.” - USA Today

“A wonderfully detailed new biography.” - Forbes

“A must read for all aspiring moguls.” - Regina E. Herzlinger, Harvard Business School

“During her lifetime, journalists were quick to describe her as the ‘least happy woman in New York,’ but Slack appears to get it right. ‘In the end,’ he says, ‘her principle crime seems to have been that the rules she chose to live by were her own rather than society’s.’...Which practically makes you want to say, ‘You go, girl!’” - New York Times Book Review

“Written with grace and authority, Hetty—Charles Slack’s follow-up to the splendid Noble Obsession—further establishes Slack not just as a worthy chronicler of the roots of American business, but also of the American story itself—and of the fascinating, unquenchable men and women who people it.” - Dean King, author of Skeletons on the Zahara: A True Story of Survival

“In his new book Charles Slack gives us, at long last, a truly rounded portrait of one of the most fascinating characters in Wall Street, or, indeed, American history. In doing so, he rescues from caricature the uniquely gifted and uniquely sad Hetty Green.” - John Steele Gordon, author of The Great Game: The Emergence of Wall Street As a World Power, 1653-2000

“[A] page-turning portrait of an important and complicated woman.” - Richmond Times-Dispatch

“[A] nuanced portrait.” - Newsweek