Skip to main content
PBS logo
 
 

Book Review of The Richest Woman in America: Hetty Green in the Gilded Age

The Richest Woman in America: Hetty Green in the Gilded Age
reviewed on + 1775 more book reviews


I was thinking of Mrs. Green and picked this up at the library (it is now the most common biography of her on library shelves in S. Cal.). I read The Day They Shook the Plum Tree as a teenager and it was an excellent popular biography. This was very disappointing as Ms. Wallach tries to fit Mrs. Green into a feminist mold.
Ms. Wallach is well read and offers many apt references to others that bring the era to readers.
She does not include the photo (Brown Bros.?) that I remember so well as the frontispiece of The Witch of Wall Street (1935?). It shows her in her black dress walking along the street, perhaps to Chemical Bank where she was given desk space as a large depositor. Mrs. Green enjoyed jousting with reporters and once said she wore black because the dirt didn't show and that she kept the serving of gruel that she brought with her for lunch warm on the steam radiator in the office.
Index.