Join our book club! In conjunction with our #NJWomenMakeHistory lecture series celebrating historic New Jersey women in this centennial year of American women’s right to vote, four authors will follow their lectures with a book group discussion. 

Meet the biographers who have profiled four of these groundbreaking women from photographer Dorothea Lange and Hetty Green to Millicent Fenwick and the mysterious Mary Rogers.

Books are available for purchase in the Museum gift shop and at our online store. 

All of these discussions will be held online and are free to attend, thanks to a generous grant from the New Jersey Council for the Humanities. Reservations are required for participation. Visit https://bit.ly/NJWomenMakeHistory to reserve a spot. A Zoom link will be shared about an hour before each discussion with everyone who signed up.

Join the club!

• Janet Wallach, The Richest Woman in America: Hetty Green in the Gilded Age, Sunday, October 11 at 4 pm.
• Amy Schapiro, Millicent Fenwick: Her Way, Saturday, October 24 at 4 pm
• Amy Gilman Srebnick, The Mysterious Death of Mary Rogers, Saturday, November 14 at 4 pm

The book club continues on Sunday, Oct. 11, at 4 pm, with a discussion with author Janet Wallach about Hetty Green (1834-1916), nicknamed the Witch of Wall Street, who was an American businesswoman and financier known as “the richest woman in America” during the Gilded Age. She was known for her wealth and was named by the Guinness Book of World Records as the “greatest miser.” She amassed a fortune as a financier when other major financiers were men. After her death, The New York Times stated that “It was the fact that Mrs. Green was a woman that made her career the subject of endless curiosity, comment and astonishment.”

Janet Wallach has written extensively about the Middle East. Her book, Desert Queen; The Extraordinary Life of Gertrude Bell (1996), has been translated into twelve languages and was a New York Times notable book of the year. Her other works include Seraglio: A Novel (2003), Chanel: Her Style and Her Life (1998). She co-authored Arafat: In the Eyes of the Beholder, a biography of Yasser Arafat; The New Palestinians, a look at the leading figures in the West Bank and Gaza; and Still Small Voices, the personal stories of ten Israelis and Palestinians during the intifada.

As a frequent contributor to The Washington Post Magazine from 1982-1987, and as a contributor to Smithsonian Magazine and other periodicals, Wallach has written cover story profiles of Queen Noor of Jordan; First Lady of Egypt Jihan Sadat; Iraqi Ambassador Nizar Hamdoon; Reza Pahlavi, would-be Shah of Iran; and Saudi entrepreneur Adnan Khashoggi. She is a Woodrow Wilson Institute Visiting Fellow and has taught at Bradford College; Earlham College; Longwood College; Ohio Wesleyan University; Stetson College; St. Olaphs College; Susquehana College; and West Virginia Wesleyan College.

The lecture series tickets are available at https://bit.ly/NJWomenMakeHistory.

The remaining lecture series schedule: (all events begin at 4 pm) 

• Sunday, 10/18 – Millicent Fenwick, Her Way, by Amy Schapiro 
• Saturday, 11/7* – The Mysterious Death of Mary Rogers, by Amy Gilman Srebnick 
• Sunday, 11/15 – Martha & Caroline Stevens, by Eileen Lynch 
• Sunday, 11/22 – Anne Ryan: Her Art and Life, by Nancy Nikkal
• Sunday, 12/6 – NJ Women Poets Make History, with live readings by 6 NJ poets 
• Sunday, 12/13 – An Interview with Maria Pepe

(Most lectures are both online and with limited in-person seating, except Nov. 7, which is online only*)

In addition to a generous Action Grant of $16,500 from the NJ Council for the Humanities to fund this lecture series, the Hoboken Historical Museum received a $5,000 COVID-19 grant from the New Jersey Council for the Humanities with funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) and the federal CARES Act. Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this [publication, program, exhibition, film, etc.] do not necessarily represent those of the National Endowment for the Humanities or the New Jersey Council for the Humanities.