Paulina Bren is an award-winning writer and historian who teaches at Vassar College. Her recent book, The Barbizon: The Hotel That Set Women Free (Two Roads, 2021), is a New York Times Editor's Choice and has received international press coverage, with rave reviews in the New Yorker, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, the Observer and The Times, among others. It has been optioned by HBO for Emilia Clarke (Game of Thrones) to produce. In addition, Paulina is a well-known scholar of everyday life and communism behind the Iron Curtain, starting with her groundbreaking book, The Greengrocer and His TV, which cast the first line in what is now a new field of study. She lives in New York City with her husband, teenage daughter, and a schnoodle named Bobo.
[An] insightful, well-written account...[Bren] details the lives of
some of the Barbizon's most well-known residents, including Molly
Brown, Grace Kelly, Sylvia Plath, and Joan Didion, and provides
historical context about midcentury single women, careers, and
sex...A must read for anyone interested in the history of
20th-century women's lives, fashion, publishing, and New York.
*Library Journal*
Varying delectably in cadence, from high-heel tapping and
typewriter clacking to sinuous and reflective passages analyzing
the complex forms of adversity Barbizon women faced over the
decades, Bren's engrossing and illuminating inquiry portrays the
original Barbizon as a vital microcosm of the long quest for
women's equality.
*Booklist*
A rare glimpse behind the doors of New York's famous women-only
residential hotel...Drawing on extensive research, extant letters,
and numerous interviews, Bren beautifully weaves together the
political climate of the times and the illuminating personal
stories of the Barbizon residents...Elegant prose brings a rich
cultural history alive.
*Kirkus Reviews*
An entertaining and enlightening account of New York's Barbizon
Hotel and the role it played in fostering women's ambitions in
20th-century America...Carefully researched yet breezily written,
this appealing history gives the Barbizon its rightful turn in the
spotlight.
*Publishers Weekly*
Before Sex and the Single Girl, before "Sex and the City," there
was the Barbizon. It was a romantic building with a romantic
purpose: It fixed a woman up with her dreams. Paulina Bren has
written a stylish, charming history of a unique institution,
brimming with aspiration and idiosyncrasy, and one that allowed a
woman to survive without either marrying someone or cooking him
dinner - even when she was barred from so much as taking a seat at
the bar.
*STACY SCHIFF, author of The Witches and Pulitzer Prize Winner*
Residents of the Barbizon Hotel were once described as 'young women
alone.' Thanks to Paulina Bren, they are alone no longer. The
Barbizon is a fascinating social history of a forgotten place and
time and an intimate portrait of women, trying to find their way in
a pre-feminist world. I'll never look at a hotel and think the same
way again.
*KEITH O'BRIEN, New York Times bestselling author of Fly Girls*
This is the history I've been wanting to read all my life. I just
didn't know where to look. How delightful to find it in the legacy
of this magical hotel, captured in brilliant detail by the
masterful Paulina Bren. Even if you can't move into the Barbizon,
reading this book will make you feel like you've lived there for
years. You'll never want to move out.
*MEGHAN DAUM, author of The Problem With Everything: My Journey
Through The New Culture Wars*
From famous models to Joan Didion, from hopeful stenographers to
Sylvia Plath. The Barbizon housed women who eagerly sought
independence, adventure, and careers in New York City. Besides the
story of the famous women-only hotel, The Barbizon chronicles key
aspects of American women's history in the first half of the
twentieth century. A compelling read!
*LYNN DUMENIL, author The Second Line of Defense: American Women
and World War I*
Touching in its loyalty to these women, the ones who arrived with
suitcases and dreams in the Barbizon's grand lobby. Bren draws on
an impressive amount of archival research, and pays tender
attention to each of the women she profiles.
*International New York Times*
This vivid, well-researched account is testimony to its vibrant
history and the women who made it such a powerhouse.
*Daily Express*
A fascinating look at a piece of hidden female history. The
fortunes of the hotel are entwined with the changing role of women
in the 20th century. It's timely too: 100 years afterit was built,
in the wake of #MeToo and the death of Sarah Everard, the idea of a
women-only hotel feels not anachronistic but liberating.
*The Sunday Times*
The stories of Candice Bergen, Joan Crawford, Liza Minnelli and
many more (as well as the importance of Mademoiselle magazine's
guest editorships) weave in and out of the story of the hotel and
the country. A pleasurable, fascinating read that is superbly
researched and told.
*WA Today*
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