When Women Invented Television

When Women Invented Television by Jennifer Keishin Armstrong, 333 pages

In the late 1940s, when television was in its infancy, four women helped shape the medium, introducing genres and formats, and blazing trails that have largely been forgotten. Why? Because their shows were for the most part broadcast live and not captured on film. But Betty White (pioneer of daytime talk shows), Gertrude Berg (Jewish sitcom queen), Irna Phillips (mother of soap operas), and Hazel Scott (the first African American woman to host a TV show) were the founding mothers of TV, and Armstrong's book shines a much-needed spotlight on these overlooked women. It's well worth a read (or a listen, which is how I experienced the book). 

Sophia of Silicon Valley

Sophia of Silicon Valley by Anna Yen, 349 pages

Twenty-something Anna Young is working hard...to find a husband. Yes, she has a degree in finance, and works hard at her successive jobs in banking, law, and technology, but her goal is to find a rich guy to marry so she can move out of her parents' house. Or at least she thinks that's her goal. Everything changes after she goes to work for startup animation company Treehouse, where she's tasked with managing investors and her prickly tech-genius boss Scott Kraft. Suddenly, she's becoming confident and working hard at a job that she enjoys, despite its many challenges.

While she doesn't spell it out, Yen's debut novel obviously has parallels to her life working for Pixar, Tesla, and founding various tech startups. Quince computers, Treehouse and Scott Kraft are thinly veiled stand-ins for Apple, Pixar and Steve Jobs, while Ion and Andre Stark closely parallel Tesla and Elon Musk. That said, it's a great professional coming-of-age book, and given the main character, one that's sorely needed.

Come Hell or Highball

Come hell or highball / Maia Chance 307 pgs.

Lola Woodby is newly widowed but isn't TOO sad about it.  Her cheating husband Alfie wasn't a catch...aside from the fact that he was rich.  The rich part turns out not to be true.  He was being supported by his rich family and leaves Lola penniless.  Unaccustomed to doing without her highballs and gin, Lola and the cook Berta leave together with beloved Pomeranian Cedric and try to figure out how to make it.  They get an offer they can't refuse...steal a film back for a $3,000 reward.  This is prohibition era so that money will keep them quite well for quite awhile.  But they have to find the film.

Written as an almost screwball comedy, Lola and Berta are modern day heroines...they have guts and charisma and Berta makes divine cinnamon rolls.  Their task is difficult and they really don't know who they are dealing with but start finding out when people end up murdered.  Not the smoothest investigators around, these two keep it together and make a memorable duo.

Lean in

Lean in: women, work, and the will to lead by Sheryl Sandberg 228 pgs.

Boy for all the stir this book has created, I thought I was going to read some pretty crazy and radical ideas.  Ready for controversy, I leaned right in and read fast and found out it is none of those things.  Yes, Sheryl Sandberg is rich and beautiful and accomplished but, at times, she deals with the same confidence issues as the rest of us.  This book just doesn't strike me as controversial.  It encourages women and men to share responsibilities and encourages women not to sell themselves short.  I can't get up in arms over such things...it all sounds pretty practical to me.

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Close to the Machine

Close to the Machine by Ellen Ullman 189 pgs.

The author is a software engineer who started programming in the 70's and is very candid about her life as a woman in the male dominated world of programmers.  She is logical and technical and fits right in even as she realizes she is old enough to be the mom of some of her employees.  This book talks about the stunning pace at which technology changes and the difficulties that presents.  These personal tales are fun to read and the description of the industry, the workers and the impact of computers is interesting.

The Richest Woman in America

The Richest Woman in America: Hetty Green in the Gilded Age by Janet Wallach  304 pp.

I don't think I ever heard of Hetty Green until I read a review of this book. Henrietta Howland Robinson was born to a Quaker family who earned their money owning whaling ships. She learned about business from her father but he did not allow her to participate in his business ventures. She inherited several million dollars from her father and an aunt and, by her death in 1916, had increased her worth to about $200 million dollars (over $3 billion by today's equivalent). She married Edward Green, the son of a wealthy Vermont family, with a prenuptial agreement that he renounce all rights to her money. Hetty was careful about her investments and after bailing out her husband's bad business deals on more than one occasion, she separated from him but they never divorced. Through her shrewd and careful business dealings, Hetty weathered several of the serious economic panics in the late 19th and early 20th century. In spite of her wealth, she lived an extremely frugal life, moving frequently between boarding house and residential hotels to avoid paying taxes in any one location. She was often ridiculed in the press for her penchant for dowdy clothing, her frequent appearances in the courts for an abundance of lawsuits against others, and her restrictions on her daughter who did not marry until she was in her late thirties. Green was an interesting character.

This is a book worth reading but not because of the biographical information on Hetty Green. I found the most fascinating parts to be about the causes of the various "panics" and financial crises the country faced during her lifetime. Every one of them can be traced to situations similar to what caused our current financial troubles. Proof that Santayana was correct when he said "Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it."

I listened to the audiobook version and was rather disappointed in some of the mispronunciations and stumbles in the reading that were not corrected in editing.