Wall Street Women's History

At this year's Biographers International Organization conference, I was delighted to meet author Sheri J. Caplan -- an attorney by training and a writer by temperament. Her new book, Petticoats and Pinstripes: Portraits of Women in Wall Street’s History, came out today from Praeger. Like so many motivated authors, Sheri noted that she wrote the book that she herself wanted to read -- she just couldn't find a collection like this on the shelves. Impressively, she sold her work to Praeger without an agent. This is corporate storytelling raised to the broader level of industry narrative. Congratulations, Sheri!

This review captures the book's spirit: “The contribution of women to the growth of Wall Street and ultimately our capitalist system has been largely hidden, until now. From colonial times to the present, Caplan leads us through the adventures of the ‘she merchants’—women who pioneered in the male-dominated world of finance. Phenomenally well-researched, Petticoats and Pinstripes delves into the lives of very real women, from Abigail Adams to Abby Joseph Cohen, all of them groundbreakers, and their relationships with men and money.”—Lisa Endlich, Author, Goldman Sachs: The Culture of Success