Profile of a Philanthropist, the Widow of a Businessman

By Anne W. Howard

NEW BOOKS

Mrs. Russell Sage: Women's Activism and Philanthropy in Gilded Age and Progressive Era America
by Ruth Crocker

After Russell Sage, a financier who had a reputation as a robber baron, died in 1906, his wife, Olivia, embarked on a career as a philanthropist. She endowed a foundation with $75-million — worth $1.5-billion today — to create the Russell Sage Foundation.

But though she remained hidden