This book is about, of course, the eponymous Barbizon hotel that operated from the 1920s until the early 2000s in New York City. Until the mid-80s, it was a hotel exclusive for women – not the only one of its kind, but the most iconic and glamorous. It focuses on some notable women who were guests at the hotel like Grace Kelly, Joan Didion, and Sylvia Plath (who wrote it into The Bell Jar as the Amazon hotel. The Barbizon weaves together the stories of the young guest editors at Mademoiselle Magazine who stayed at the hotel for glorious summers, women who worked for Ford Modeling Agency or the Katharine Gibbs Secretarial School, and countless other starry-eyed young women following their dreams in Manhattan.