Paulina Bren's Books

The Barbizon

The Hotel That Set Women Free

By: Paulina Bren

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The Barbizon

The Hotel That Set Women Free

By: Paulina Bren

From award-winning author Paulina Bren comes the "captivating portrait" (The Wall Street Journal) of New York's most famous residential hotel--The Barbizon--and the remarkable women who lived there. Welcome to New York's legendary hotel for women. Liberated from home and hearth by World War I, politically enfranchised and ready to work, women arrived to take their place in the dazzling new skyscrapers of Manhattan. But they did not want to stay in uncomfortable boarding houses. They wanted what men already had--exclusive residential hotels with maid service, workout rooms, and private dining. Built in 1927, at the height of the Roaring Twenties, the Barbizon Hotel was designed as a luxurious safe haven for the "Modern Woman" hoping for a career in the arts. Over time, it became the place to stay for any ambitious young woman hoping for fame and fortune. Sylvia Plath fictionalized her time there in The Bell Jar, and, over the years, it's almost 700 tiny rooms with matching floral curtains and bedspreads housed, among many others, Titanic survivor Molly Brown; actresses Grace Kelly, Liza Minnelli, Ali MacGraw, Jaclyn Smith; and writers Joan Didion, Gael Greene, Diane Johnson, Meg Wolitzer. Mademoiselle magazine boarded its summer interns there, as did Katharine Gibbs Secretarial School its students and the Ford Modeling Agency its young models. Before the hotel's residents were household names, they were young women arriving at the Barbizon with a suitcase and a dream. Not everyone who passed through the Barbizon's doors was destined for success--for some, it was a story of dashed hopes--but until 1981, when men were finally let in, the Barbizon offered its residents a room of their own and a life without family obligations. It gave women a chance to remake themselves however they pleased; it was the hotel that set them free. No place had existed like it before or has since. "Poignant and intriguing" (The New Republic), The Barbizon weaves together a tale that has, until now, never been told. It is both a vivid portrait of the lives of these young women looking for something more and a "brilliant many-layered social history of women's ambition and a rapidly changing New York through the 20th century" (The Guardian).

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336

Publisher

Simon and Schuster

Published Date

ISBN 10

1982123907

ISBN 13

9781982123901

The Barbizon

The New York Hotel That Set Women Free

By: Paulina Bren

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The Barbizon

The New York Hotel That Set Women Free

By: Paulina Bren

AS HEARD ON RADIO 4 WOMAN'S HOUR 'Captivating . . . a brilliant many-layered social history of women's ambition and a rapidly changing New York' Observer 'A fascinating look at a piece of forgotten female history' Sunday Times 'A treat, elegantly spinning a forgotten story of female liberation, ambition and self-invention' Guardian 'A deeply researched history, leavened with gossip . . . offers a full sweep of the changing status of American women in the twentieth century' TLS WELCOME TO THE BARBIZON, NEW YORK'S PREMIER WOMEN-ONLY HOTEL Built in 1927 as a home for the 'Modern Woman' seeking a career in the arts, the Barbizon became the place to stay for ambitious, independent women, who were lured by the promise of fame and good fortune. Sylvia Plath fictionalized her time there in The Bell Jar, and over the years, its 688 tiny floral 'highly feminine boudoirs' also housed Joan Crawford, Grace Kelly (notorious for sneaking in men), Joan Didion, Candice Bergen, Charlie's Angel Jaclyn Smith, Ali MacGraw, Cybil Shepherd, Elaine Stritch, Liza Minnelli, Eudora Welty, The Cosby Show's Phylicia Rashad, Grey Gardens's Edith Bouvier Beale, and writers Mona Simpson and Ann Beattie, among many others. Mademoiselle boarded its summer interns there - perfectly turned-out young women, who would never be spotted hatless - as did Katherine Gibbs Secretarial School its students - in their white-gloves and kitten heels - and the Ford Modelling Agency its young models. THE BARBIZON is a colourful, glamorous portrait of the lives of the young women, who -- from the Jazz Age New Women of the 1920s to the Liberated Women of the 1960s -- came to New York looking for something more. 'The story of the Barbizon is in many ways the story of American women in the twentieth century' Economist 'Illuminating . . . this vivid, well researched account is testament to its vibrant history and the women who made it such a powerhouse' Daily Express

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336

Publisher

Hachette UK

Published Date

ISBN 10

1529393051

ISBN 13

9781529393057

The Barbizon

The Hotel That Set Women Free

By: Paulina Bren

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The Barbizon

The Hotel That Set Women Free

By: Paulina Bren

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336

Publisher

Simon and Schuster

Published Date

ISBN 10

1982123907

ISBN 13

9781982123901

The Greengrocer and His TV

The Culture of Communism after the 1968 Prague Spring

By: Paulina Bren

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The Greengrocer and His TV

The Culture of Communism after the 1968 Prague Spring

By: Paulina Bren

The 1968 Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia brought an end to the Prague Spring and its promise of "socialism with a human face." Before the invasion, Czech reformers had made unexpected use of television to advance political and social change. In its aftermath, Communist Party leaders employed the medium to achieve "normalization," pitching television stars against political dissidents in a televised spectacle that defined the times. The Greengrocer and His TV offers a new cultural history of communism from the Prague Spring to the Velvet Revolution that reveals how state-endorsed ideologies were played out on television, particularly through soap opera-like serials. In focusing on the small screen, Paulina Bren looks to the "normal" of normalization, to the everyday experience of late communism. The figure central to this book is the greengrocer who, in a seminal essay by Václav Havel, symbolized the ordinary citizen who acquiesced to the communist regime out of fear. Bren challenges simplistic dichotomies of fearful acquiescence and courageous dissent to dramatically reconfigure what we know, or think we know, about everyday life under communism in the 1970s and 1980s. Deftly moving between the small screen, the street, and the Central Committee (and imaginatively drawing on a wide range of sources that include television shows, TV viewers' letters, newspapers, radio programs, the underground press, and the Communist Party archives), Bren shows how Havel's greengrocer actually experienced "normalization" and the ways in which popular television serials framed this experience. Now back by popular demand, socialist-era serials, such as The Woman Behind the Counter and The Thirty Adventures of Major Zeman, provide, Bren contends, a way of seeing—literally and figuratively—Czechoslovakia's normalization and Eastern Europe's real socialism.

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265

Publisher

Cornell University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0801462142

ISBN 13

9780801462146

She-Wolves: The Untold History of Women on Wall Street

By: Paulina Bren

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She-Wolves: The Untold History of Women on Wall Street

By: Paulina Bren

A Town & Country Must-Read for the Fall 2024 • In development with Mark Gordon Pictures The propulsive story of the women who sought, and gained, a piece of the action on Wall Street. First came the secretaries from Brooklyn and Queens—the “smart cookies” who saw that making money, lots of it, might be within their grasp. Then came the first female Harvard Business School graduates, who were in for a rude awakening because an equal degree did not mean equal opportunity. But by the 1980s, as the market went into turbodrive, women were being plucked from elite campuses to feed the belly of a rapidly expanding beast, 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 story of how women infiltrated Wall Street from the swinging sixties to 9/11—starting at a time when “No Ladies” signs hung across the doors of its luncheon clubs and (more discretely) inside its brokerage houses and investment banks. If the wolves of Wall Street made a show of their ferocity, the she-wolves did so with subtlety and finesse. Research analysts signed their reports with genderless initials. Muriel “Mickie” Siebert, the first woman to buy a seat on the NYSE, threatened she’d have port-a-potties delivered if the exchange didn’t finally install a ladies’ room near the dining room. The infamous 1996 Boom-Boom Room class action lawsuit, filed by women at Smith Barney, pulled back the curtain on a bawdy subculture where unapologetic sexism and racism were the norm. As engaging as it is enraging, She-Wolves is an illuminating deep dive into the collision of women, finance, and New York.

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Page Count

205

Publisher

W. W. Norton & Company

Published Date

ISBN 10

1324035161

ISBN 13

9781324035169

The Time of Popular Sovereignty

Process and the Democratic State

By: Paulina Ochoa Espejo

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The Time of Popular Sovereignty

Process and the Democratic State

By: Paulina Ochoa Espejo

Democracy is usually conceived as based on self-rule or rule by the people, and it is this which is taken to ground the legitimacy of the democratic form of government. But who constitutes the people? Democratic political theory has a potentially fatal weakness at its core unless it can answer this question satisfactorily. In The Time of Popular Sovereignty, Paulina Ochoa Espejo examines the problems the concept of the people raises for liberal democratic theory, constitutional theory, and critical theory. She argues that to solve these problems, the people cannot be conceived as simply a collection of individuals. Rather, the people should be seen as a series of events, an ongoing process unfolding in time. She then offers a new theory of democratic peoplehood, laying the foundations for a new theory of democratic legitimacy.

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Page Count

234

Publisher

Penn State Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0271056797

ISBN 13

9780271056791

Making Jeans Green

Linking Sustainability, Business and Fashion

By: Paulina Szmydke-Cacciapalle

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Making Jeans Green

Linking Sustainability, Business and Fashion

By: Paulina Szmydke-Cacciapalle

Consumers spend approximately $93 billion on denim products every year. This consumption comes at a great cost, with thousands of litres of fresh water, hazardous chemicals and energy contributing to just one pair of jeans, leaving the environment and the industry vulnerable to pollution and climate change. Using facts, figures, case studies and anecdotes, this book investigates why the industry has been so slow to adopt green technologies and offers practical solutions to designers and fashion executives who want to switch to cleaner manufacturing, including those working in the ‘fast fashion’ sector. It also offers advice to the eco-conscious consumer who wants to purchase denim more sustainably. Considering the full lifecycle of a pair of jeans from the cotton crop to disposal, it presents examples of how to go green at different stages. This book will be of great interest to fashion students and researchers, as well as designers, fashion executives, policy-makers and anyone who comes into contact with the world of denim.

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Page Count

218

Publisher

Routledge

Published Date

ISBN 10

1351200534

ISBN 13

9781351200530

The Greengrocer and His TV

The Culture of Communism after the 1968 Prague Spring

By: Paulina Bren

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The Greengrocer and His TV

The Culture of Communism after the 1968 Prague Spring

By: Paulina Bren

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265

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Cornell University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0801462142

ISBN 13

9780801462146

Transnational Moments of Change

Europe 1945, 1968, 1989

By: Gerd Rainer-Horn,Padraic Kenney

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Transnational Moments of Change

Europe 1945, 1968, 1989

By: Gerd Rainer-Horn,Padraic Kenney

Transnational Moments of Change offers a broad introduction to the methodology and practice of transnational history. To demonstrate the value of this approach, the work focuses on Europe since World War II, a period whose study particularly benefits from a transnational vantage point. Twelve distinguished contributors from around the globe offer a range of transnational approaches to three continent-wide moments of change. The work begins with a look at the close of World War Two, when liberation from Nazi occupation offered the opportunity for social and political experiment. Next, essays explore the late 1960s as generational change and political dissatisfaction rocked urban centers from Paris to Prague. Finally, the book turns to the fall of communism, a moment of revolutionary change that not only spread rapidly from country to country, but even affected and interacted with protest movements in Western Europe and elsewhere. Together, the essays provide both a new perspective on postwar Europe and a range of models for the historian interested in using the transnational approach.

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265

Publisher

Rowman & Littlefield Publishers

Published Date

ISBN 10

1461666716

ISBN 13

9781461666714

Book's by Paulina Bren

The Barbizon

The Barbizon

The Barbizon

The Barbizon

The Barbizon

The Barbizon

The Greengrocer and His TV

The Greengrocer and His TV

She-Wolves: The Untold History of Women on Wall Street

She-Wolves: The Untold History of Women on Wall Street

The Time of Popular Sovereignty

The Time of Popular Sovereignty

Making Jeans Green

Making Jeans Green

The Greengrocer and His TV

The Greengrocer and His TV

Transnational Moments of Change

Transnational Moments of Change

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