Anthologies
| Title | Published | Buy on Amazon |
|---|---|---|
| Transnational Moments of Change: Europe 1945, 1968, 1989 | 2004 | Buy |
| Communism Unwrapped: Consumption in Cold War Eastern Europe | 2012 | Buy |
Non-Fiction
| Title | Published | Buy on Amazon |
|---|---|---|
| The Greengrocer and His TV | 2010 | Buy |
| The Barbizon: The Hotel That Set Women Free | 2021 | Buy |
Paulina Bren is a historian and author who specializes in twentieth-century European and American cultural history. She is a professor at Vassar College, and her academic background informs all of her published work. Her best-known book is The Barbizon: The Hotel That Set Women Free (2021), which tells the story of the Barbizon Hotel in New York City, a women-only residential hotel that housed aspiring models, actresses, and writers from the 1920s through the 1980s.
Her earlier book, The Greengrocer and His TV (2010), examines the role of television in Czechoslovakia under communist rule. The title references Vaclav Havel’s famous essay about a greengrocer and applies that lens to how state-controlled TV shaped everyday life behind the Iron Curtain. Bren has also co-edited two academic anthologies: Transnational Moments of Change (2004), covering key turning points in European history, and Communism Unwrapped (2012), about consumer culture in Cold War Eastern Europe.
Her writing bridges the gap between academic scholarship and popular history. The Barbizon in particular reached a wide readership beyond academia, and readers interested in women’s history, New York City, or mid-century American culture will find it especially worthwhile.