BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Business

John D Rockefeller. Cornelius Vanderbilt. Andrew Carnegie. John Jacob Astor. Henry Ford. Joseph P Kennedy.Even today, long after their deaths, the names of these six men continue to be associated with wealth and power.When they were alive, they dominated their worlds as fewmen had done before, and few have done since.

Jean Paul Getty (1892-1976) -  a powerful, oil tycoon who was at one point the richest man in the world, with a private life described as ‘bizarre beyond belief’, but what drove him and shaped the man he was?

The author looks at the difficulties Getty had in interacting with others on a personal level, and why many have portrayed Getty as living a solitary, even lonely life, despite being surrounded by guards, staff, visiting business colleagues and female companions.  Instead he suggests that Getty's fortune was to serve as the central foundation of his life. His need to create, defend and expand that fortune – all of which he successfully did – is key to understanding his life.

Hetty Howland Green (1834-1916), born Hetty Howland Robinson, and known in her later years as “The Witch of Wall Street”, was born in the whaling town of New Bedford, Massachusetts to Quaker parents. This biography charts Hetty Green’s extraordinary ascent up the pyramid of wealth to a point where, in the earliest years of the twentieth century, she was being identified as the richest woman in America.

The first in a series of brief biographies of significant tycoons, this is an insight into the life and methods of one of the earliest and most influential business women in the US. It examines the source of her wealth, and her method of building upon that.  It also profiles those who helped or thwarted her along the way.

130 pages. Includes a family tree, further reading, timeline and index.