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The Richest Woman in America
- Hetty Green in the Gilded Age
- Narrated by: Coleen Marlo
- Length: 8 hrs and 26 mins
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Publisher's summary
A captivating biography of America's first female tycoon, Hetty Green, the iconoclast who forged one of the greatest fortunes of her time.
No woman in the Gilded Age made as much money as Hetty Green. At the time of her death in 1916, she was worth at least 100 million dollars, equal to more than 2 billion dollars today. A strong believer in women being financially independent, she offered valuable lessons for the present times.
Abandoned at birth by her neurotic mother, scorned by her misogynist father, Hetty set out as a child to prove her value. Following the simple rules of her wealthy Quaker father, she successfully invested her money and along the way proved to herself that she was wealthy and therefore worthy.
Never losing faith in America's potential, she ignored the herd mentality and took advantage of financial panics and crises. When everyone else was selling, she bought railroads, real estate, and government bonds. And when everyone was buying and borrowing, she put her money into cash and earned safe returns on her dollars. Men mocked her and women scoffed at her frugal ways, but she turned her back and piled up her earnings, amassing a fortune that supported businesses, churches, municipalities, and even the city of New York itself.
She relished a challenge. When her aunt died and did not leave Hetty the fortune she expected, she plunged into a groundbreaking lawsuit that still resonates in law schools and courts. When her husband defied her and sank her money on his own risky interests, she threw him out and, marching down to Wall Street, quickly made up the loss. Her independence, outspokenness, and disdain for the upper crust earned her a reputation for harshness that endured for decades. Newspapers kept her in the headlines, linking her name with witches and miscreants. Yet those who knew her admired her warmth, her wisdom, and her wit.
Set during a period of financial crisis strikingly similar to our current one, acclaimed author Janet Wallach's engrossing exploration of a fascinating life revives a rarely-mentioned queen of American finance.
Critic reviews
Featured Article: The Gilded Age in History and Fiction
While fans of Julian Fellowes’s Gilded Age may be gagging on the luxurious costumes and sumptuous sets, part of the fun is sorting out fact from fiction in the HBO period drama. With a mix of invented characters and actual historical figures—such as society queen Caroline Astor and African American newspaper editor and civil rights leader T. Thomas Fortune—enthusiasts have plenty of resources available so they can learn the truth about the extravagant era when wealthy railroad magnates and other arrivistes were upending late 19th-century New York City society and culture.
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- Narrated by: Denise Kiernan
- Length: 10 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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Orphaned at a young age, Edith Stuyvesant Dresser claimed lineage from one of New York's best known families. She grew up in Newport and Paris, and her engagement and marriage to George Vanderbilt was one of the most watched events of Gilded Age society. But none of this prepared her to be mistress of Biltmore House. Before their marriage, the wealthy and bookish Vanderbilt had dedicated his life to creating a spectacular European-style estate on 125,000 acres of North Carolina wilderness.
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Very factual
- By Jennifer on 11-28-17
By: Denise Kiernan
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Fortune's Children
- The Fall of the House of Vanderbilt
- By: Arthur T. Vanderbilt II
- Narrated by: Patrick Lawlor
- Length: 18 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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Written by descendant Arthur T. Vanderbilt II, Fortune's Children traces the dramatic and amazingly colorful history of this great American family, from the rise of industrialist and philanthropist Cornelius Vanderbilt to the fall of his progeny - wild spendthrifts whose profligacy bankrupted a vast inheritance.
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The Rise and Fall of the Gilded Age
- By Hilary on 10-22-14
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Flirting with Danger
- The Mysterious Life of Marguerite Harrison, Socialite Spy
- By: Janet Wallach
- Narrated by: Saskia Maarleveld
- Length: 9 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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Born a privileged child of America’s Gilded Age, Marguerite Harrison rebelled against her mother’s ambitions, married the man she loved, was widowed at thirty-seven, and set off on a life of adventure. Hired as a society reporter, when America entered World War I she applied to Military Intelligence to work as a spy. Over a decade, Harrison’s mysterious adventures took her to Europe, Baghdad, and the Far East, as a socialite, secret agent, and documentary filmmaker. Janet Wallach captures Harrison’s daring and glamour in this stranger-than-fiction history of a woman drawn to the impossible.
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The daring nature of her character.
- By judy on 05-09-24
By: Janet Wallach
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The Social Graces
- By: Renée Rosen
- Narrated by: Hillary Huber, Saskia Maarleveld
- Length: 12 hrs
- Unabridged
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1876. In the glittering world of Manhattan's upper crust, women are valued by their pedigree, dowry, and, most importantly, connections. They have few rights and even less independence - what they do have is society. The more celebrated the hostess, the more powerful the woman. And none is more powerful than Caroline Astor - the Mrs. Astor.
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Disappointing Effort
- By HistoryNerd on 05-11-21
By: Renée Rosen
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The Husband Hunters
- American Heiresses Who Married into the British Aristocracy
- By: Anne de Courcy
- Narrated by: Clare Corbett
- Length: 10 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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Towards the end of the 19th century and for the first few years of the 20th, a strange invasion took place in Britain. The citadel of power, privilege, and breeding in which the titled, land-owning governing class had barricaded itself for so long was breached. The incomers were a group of young women who, 50 years earlier, would have been looked on as the alien denizens of another world - the New World, to be precise. From 1874 - the year that Jennie Jerome, the first known "Dollar Princess", married Randolph Churchill - to 1905, dozens of young American heiresses married into the British peerage....
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Bondfide Valuable History Lesson
- By A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies. on 09-21-18
By: Anne de Courcy
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Desert Queen
- The Extraordinary Life of Gertrude Bell: Adventurer, Adviser to Kings, Ally of Lawrence of Arabia
- By: Janet Wallach
- Narrated by: Jean Gilpin
- Length: 20 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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Turning her back on her privileged life in Victorian England, Gertrude Bell (1868-1926), fired by her innate curiosity, journeyed the world and became fascinated with all things Arab. Traveling the length and breadth of the Arab region, armed with a love for its language and its people, she not only produced several enormously popular books based on her experiences but became instrumental to the British foreign office. When World War I erupted, and the British needed the loyalty of the Arab leaders, it was Gertrude Bell's work and connections that helped provided the brain for T. E. Lawrence's military brawn.
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Great beginning, then gets boring
- By Msz on 03-31-16
By: Janet Wallach
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Curse of Riches
- By: Claire Prentice
- Narrated by: Claire Prentice, Hillary Huber
- Length: 9 hrs and 7 mins
- Original Recording
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How did the Wendels, one of New York’s most famous Gilded Age families, disappear from history? The Wendels built a fortune from New York real estate, and rubbed shoulders with the Astors, Vanderbilts, and Stuyvesants. But as the 19th century came to an end, the Wendel family tore itself apart. Following six years of painstaking archival research, Claire Prentice has prised open the door of the Wendels’ Fifth Avenue mansion—dubbed “the house of mystery” by the press—to reveal a fascinating and dysfunctional family imprisoned in a gilded cage.
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Kept Waiting for it to be Interesting
- By Mary on 06-23-23
By: Claire Prentice
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An American Princess: The Many Lives of Allene Tew
- By: Annejet van der Zijl, Michele Hutchison - translator
- Narrated by: Teri Schnaubelt
- Length: 5 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
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Born to a pioneering family in Upstate New York in the late 1800s, Allene Tew was beautiful, impetuous, and frustrated by the confines of her small hometown. At eighteen, she met Tod Hostetter at a local dance, having no idea that the mercurial charmer she would impulsively wed was heir to one of the wealthiest families in America. But when he died twelve years later, Allene packed her bags for New York City. Never once did she look back.
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American princess
- By ZOE R on 05-12-18
By: Annejet van der Zijl, and others
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The Phantom of Fifth Avenue
- The Mysterious Life and Scandalous Death of Heiress Huguette Clark
- By: Meryl Gordon
- Narrated by: Bernadette Dunne
- Length: 13 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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Born in 1906, Huguette Clark grew up in her family's 121-room Beaux Arts mansion in New York and was one of the leading celebrities of her day. Her father, William Andrews Clark, was the second richest man in America. Huguette attended the coronation of King George V. And at 22, with a personal fortune of $50 million, she married a Princeton man and childhood friend. Two-years later the couple divorced. After a series of failed romances, Huguette began to withdraw from society. What happened to Huguette that turned a vivacious, young socialite into a recluse?
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The OTHER Huguette Clark Book
- By Teadrinker on 03-24-15
By: Meryl Gordon
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The Last Dollar Princess
- A Young Heiress's Quest for Independence in Gilded Age America and George V's Coronation Year England
- By: Linda Bennett Pennell
- Narrated by: Ally Lane
- Length: 10 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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It must be said. Scandal follows her family like an ever-faithful hound. No matter how hard they kick it away, it comes slinking around time-after-time. Although her relatives are obsessed with social position and the opinions of others, heiress India Elisabeth Petra De Vries Ledbetter is determined to live life by her own terms, family expectations and society's demands be damned.
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Disappointing
- By KB on 06-21-23
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The Glitter and the Gold
- The American Duchess - In Her Own Words
- By: Consuelo Vanderbilt Balsan
- Narrated by: Coleen Marlo
- Length: 9 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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Consuelo Vanderbilt was young, beautiful and the heir to a vast family fortune. She was also deeply in love with an American suitor when her mother chose instead for her to fulfill her social ambitions and marry an English Duke. Leaving her life in America, she came to England as the Duchess of Marlborough in 1895 and took up residence in her new home: Blenheim Palace. The ninth Duchess gives unique first-hand insight into life at the very pinnacle of English society in the Edwardian era.
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Facinating Story- Terrible reading
- By Ashley D on 03-27-14
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The First Tycoon
- The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt
- By: T.J. Stiles
- Narrated by: Mark Deakins
- Length: 28 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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A gripping, groundbreaking biography of the combative man whose genius and force of will created modern capitalism. Founder of a dynasty, builder of the original Grand Central, creator of an impossibly vast fortune, Cornelius “Commodore” Vanderbilt is an American icon. Humbly born on Staten Island during George Washington’s presidency, he rose from boatman to builder of the nation’s largest fleet of steamships to lord of a railroad empire.
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Great! If you can get through it...
- By john on 08-08-10
By: T.J. Stiles
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The Gilded Age
- By: Mark Twain, Charles Dudley Warner
- Narrated by: Bronson Pinchot
- Length: 16 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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The Gilded Age is the collaborative work of Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner that satirized the era that followed the Civil War. This period is often referred to as the “Gilded Age” because of this book. The corruption and greed that was typical of the time is exemplified through two fictional narratives: one, of the Hawkins, a poor family from Tennessee that tries to persuade the government to purchase their seventy-five thousand acres of unimproved land.
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An American classic, beautifully narrated
- By TX lilbit on 03-31-12
By: Mark Twain, and others
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A Well-Behaved Woman
- A Novel of the Vanderbilts
- By: Therese Anne Fowler
- Narrated by: Barrie Kreinik
- Length: 14 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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Alva Smith, her Southern family destitute after the Civil War, married into one of America’s great Gilded Age dynasties: the newly wealthy but socially shunned Vanderbilts. Alva defied convention for women of her time, asserting power within her marriage and becoming a leader in the women's suffrage movement. In A Well-Behaved Woman, Therese Anne Fowler paints a glittering world of enormous wealth contrasted against desperate poverty, of social ambition and social scorn, of friendship and betrayal, and an unforgettable story of a remarkable woman.
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Don’t get me wrong...
- By carmen on 03-09-19
What listeners say about The Richest Woman in America
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- just asking for some common sense
- 04-10-21
Shed a different light than I expected
Having spent time in Bellows Falls, Vermont I had heard of Hetty Green. I heard her referred to as "The Witch of Wall Street" many times. I expected her biography to show what a monster she was, but this book really humanized her. I was quite surprised that when mentioning the nicknames that she had that none included Witch.
Hetty Green had more layers than I expected. She was one of a kind. She was not a total witch and I had a lot of sympathy for her at times.
The narration was good, but not fantastic. Still, a solid book and solid narration
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- Lisa
- 06-18-23
A hidden gem
Loved the story and timeless principles of wealth. Fascinating to hear so many of the same issues we think are new are actually just being repeated
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- L. T.
- 07-27-22
One of the Best Historical Biographies
I didn’t want to stop listening. A fascinating history of the Gilded Age is wrapped around the amazing life of a woman way ahead of her time. Using her quiet faith and common sense, she maneuvered around and among men, amassing a fortune rarely seen even today. Well worth the read.
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- Beje
- 11-02-14
On The Edge Every Minute
Where does The Richest Woman in America rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?
This book was spellbinding from beginning to end. I thoroughly enjoyed it and will re-read it. It's not the best book I've read but it ranks right there at the top. It was worth the investment of money and time.
What did you like best about this story?
I like the focused energy that Hetti illustrated. She was way ahead of her time.
Which character – as performed by Coleen Marlo – was your favorite?
Hetti, of course. She over shadowed every other character.
Did you have an extreme reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?
By reading this book, I felt like I intimately came to know the real Hetti Green: a cool, detached, cutthroat, money grabber. At times, I was sickened by her stinginess and she never was able to redeem herself with me. There were glimpses of what may have been an underlying care for others but I was always a bit suspicious that Hetti's motivation was money driven, not altruistic. Still, I greatly admired her aggressiveness, creativity, and competitiveness.
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1 person found this helpful
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- flowerwhirlie
- 01-13-24
Enjoyable Read
I’ve been intrigued by Hetty Green for years.
Enjoyed this engaging, detailed telling of her life. Well done.
The audio version was excellent.
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- leslie
- 11-10-16
Not that great
The story was written fairly bland peppered with far too many figures and less about what they meant, unless you are an accountant or financier. The reader clipped at a fast pace with little variation or meaning. Not sure if it was one factor or both that made this book tedious. I did get through it, but I was looking forward to a story with more effect like with Rockefeller or Morgan. It had the potential, which made it disappointing.
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2 people found this helpful
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- NMReed_author
- 10-20-18
great history of finance
Great story of one investors success during the Gilded Age from mid 1800s to early 1900, and this person just happens to be a woman. Thanks to a total lack of restrictions on finance, this period of history is frought with booms then busts every couple years, when a person could be a millionaire one week and a pauper the next which happened frequently.
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- Christina M. Kruse
- 06-10-15
Horrible Narrator
I was very interested in the subject matter, however, the narrators affected voice almost made me stop listening. If you can get past that voice the story is interesting.
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4 people found this helpful
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- Debra Gaskill
- 09-24-23
Interesting story
I had never heard of Hetty Green and so was very interested to hear this book performed. Unfortunately, the narrators odd pronunciations and rhythms took away from the overall story.
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- LeAnne E
- 03-20-14
Narrator has a grating drone.
What could have made this a 4 or 5-star listening experience for you?
Hetty Green was an incredibly fascinating woman who was well ahead of her time. I would have enjoyed listening to the account of her life had it not been for the narrator's very poor performance. From the beginning, she speaks in a quick monotone that flies over the text with nearly no inflection. Repeatedly, significant events in the book are spilled out with little affect. It was as if the narrator was reading the book for the first time as she was recording, with no interest in the subject matter whatsoever. I abandoned the book one third of the way through in order to read the hard copy myself.
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4 people found this helpful