Focusing on the groundbreaking achievements of women in finance, this book unveils the thrilling history of their ascent on Wall Street. It highlights their struggles and triumphs as they defied patriarchal barriers, blending an engaging narrative style with historical insights. By intertwining the stories of these trailblazing women, the book showcases their impact on the financial world and the ongoing fight for equality in a male-dominated industry.
Welcome to New York's legendary hotel for women, the Barbizon. Liberated after WWI from home and hearth, women flocked to New York City during the Roaring Twenties. But even as women's residential hotels became the fashion, the Barbizon stood out; it was designed for young women with artistic aspirations, and included soaring art studios and soundproofed practice rooms. More importantly still, with no men allowed beyond the lobby, the Barbizon signaled respectability, a place where a young woman of a certain class could feel at home. But as the stock market crashed and the Great Depression set in, the clientele changed, though women's ambitions did not; the Barbizon Hotel became the go-to destination for any young American woman with a dream to be something more. While Sylvia Plath most famously fictionalized her time there in The Bell Jar, the Barbizon was also where Titanic survivor Molly Brown sang her last aria; where Grace Kelly danced topless in the hallways; where Joan Didion got her first taste of Manhattan; and where both Ali MacGraw and Jacquelyn Smith found their calling as actresses. Students of the prestigious Katharine Gibbs Secretarial School had three floors to themselves, Eileen Ford used the hotel as a guest house for her youngest models, and Mademoiselle magazine boarded its summer interns there, including a young designer named Betsey Johnson
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.