This is a remarkable book. Page Fox seemed to have been an extraordinarily talented, knowledgeable, courageous, intelligent, observant, insightful, inventive confident and independent woman who was obviously very well and broadly educated and yet experienced in grinding out a living for herself. She seemed to be able to combine the killer instincts of an entrepreneur with the inventive talents of a Thomas Edison, and deliver the results in this entertaining, humorous and eloquently written book. Its packed with over 300 of her own inventions and numerous shrewd observations and sagacious marketing and investment advice over an astonishingly broad range of topics.
She appears driven to seek success by the path of long, hard and tedious effort in whatever works best and always with a financial objective in mind. She shows how to create opportunities based on her observations of the latest trends and then how to ruthlessly execute them, and how to always be on the lookout to perceive and seize an advantage.
it is surprizing just how many of her ideas have been prophetic and how many have still to be exploited. She forecast many tools and gadgets that are in common use today and even thought of the pedometer. Were she alive today she would be inventing apps for cells by the dozen.
You will also be surprized to find detailed recipes for manufacturing the “quack” cures spruiked openly in her time and to hear her recommendations to grow opium crops, mine for asbestos, kill whales for their oil, beavers for their fur, and elephants for their ivory. How times change.
