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She Wolves

On sale

19th September 2024

Price: £20

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Selected: Hardcover / ISBN-13: 9781399800921

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They broke down the doors of Wall Street’s old boys’ club, finding their first foothold in small brokerage houses before making their way into investment banks and exchange floors.

With a thick skin and a dash of humour, as needed, they pushed back against those who said they did not belong.

Until they finally made it.

Introducing the Women of Wall Street . . .

First came the secretaries who struggled to get past the typing pool. Then came the first Harvard Business School grads who were laughed out of interviews. But by the 1980s, with markets in turbo-drive, women were playing for high stakes in Wall Street’s bad-boy culture by day and clubbing by night.

In She Wolves, award-winning historian Paulina Bren tells the inside story of how women infiltrated Wall Street, from the swinging sixties – a time when ‘No Ladies’ signs hung across the doors of its luncheon clubs and (more discretely) inside its brokerage houses and investment banks – up to 9/11. If the wolves of Wall Street made a show of their ferocity, the she wolves did so with subtlety and finesse, navigating a bawdy subculture where unapologetic sexism and racism were the norm.

As engaging as it is enraging, She Wolves is a fascinating behind-the-scenes deep dive into the collision of women, finance and New York.

‘Vivid . . . Riveting’ LIZA MUNDY, author of Code Girls

‘Fascinating . . . Gorgeous’
AMY ODELL, author of Anna

From the award-winning author of The Barbizon

Reviews

Praise for THE BARBIZON:
More than a biography of a building, the book is an absorbing history of labor and women's rights in one of the country's largest cities, and also of the places that those women left behind to chase their dreams.
The New Yorker
A captivating history . . . Bren's book is really about the changing cultural perceptions of women's ambition throughout the last century, set against the backdrop of that most famous theater of aspiration, New York City . . . Bren draws on an impressive amount of archival research, and pays tender attention to each of the women she profiles.
New York Times
A fascinating look at a piece of forgotten female history.
The Sunday Times