Kate O

The bulk of the book defines the Barbizon woman against the backdrop of America spanning from the stock market crash of 1929 through the Depression, the McCarthy era and the civil rights movement. Bren covers famous women on the hotel's illustrious guest list — including Sylvia Plath, Joan Didion, Grace Kelly and the Titanic's "unsinkable" Molly Brown — as her main and weighty subjects, but she also gives shape to lesser-known and equally important Barbizon residents such as Barbara