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THE RICHEST WOMAN IN AMERICA

HETTY GREEN IN THE GILDED AGE

The dearth of diaries and personal correspondence available to the author has not prevented her from writing a thoroughly...

The transporting tale of Hetty Green, who, after being rejected by her parents, learned business from her grandfather and amassed a fortune valued at $100 million in 1916.

Wallach (Seraglio, 2003, etc.) frequently points out that Green’s methods and philosophy of wealth were remarkably similar to that of Warren Buffett. She particularly notes the many references to her miserliness and how the same qualities were seen as mere eccentricity in men. Her Quaker background taught her how to be independent and make business decisions, and she never wasted her time and especially not her money on the foolishness of the Gilded Age. Green gave freely to charities of her choice but ruthlessly foreclosed when a note was due and unpaid. When her husband needed a bailout from one of his ill-advised speculations, she demanded his properties in return. She always kept a great deal of cash at the ready in order to quickly take advantage of a good buy, and she never bought anything until she had thoroughly investigated every aspect of it. She enjoyed the game of business, especially beating out her rivals. Green emerged from multiple financial disasters—e.g., in 1873, 1893 and 1908—richer than before, always buying as others panicked and selling when prices finally recovered. Her fiscal policies were firm, and she never waivered from them: Never use another’s money, never take on a partner, and avoid the pitfalls of leveraging, overborrowing and overspending.

The dearth of diaries and personal correspondence available to the author has not prevented her from writing a thoroughly enjoyable biography.

Pub Date: Sept. 25, 2012

ISBN: 978-0-385-53197-9

Page Count: 304

Publisher: Nan A. Talese

Review Posted Online: July 6, 2012

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2012

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NIGHT

The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...

Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children. 

He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions. 

The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the sphere of suffering shared, and in this case extended to the death march itself, there is no spiritual or emotional legacy here to offset any reader reluctance.

Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006

ISBN: 0374500010

Page Count: 120

Publisher: Hill & Wang

Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006

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THE PURSUIT OF HAPPYNESS

FROM MEAN STREETS TO WALL STREET

Well-told and admonitory.

Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.

Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.

Well-told and admonitory.

Pub Date: June 1, 2006

ISBN: 0-06-074486-3

Page Count: 320

Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006

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