Cute. That would be the best word to describe this short, particularly sweet memoir. Going into it, I was waiting for vast accounts of the inner workings of one of the most fantastic stores ever to exist. The tome is more character driven than tell-all, which I would assume stems from the era the author comes from (that is, polite and loyal). I could have done without the dozens of "Ohmygosh!"s that were sprinkled quite liberally throughout the narrative - it was distracting, irritating, and took away credibility from the writer. The naive charm still held me captive, though: I received a glimpse of a time where girls still wore gloves and hats, were polite and charming, and treated everyday as if it were a glamorous event. The backdrop of World War Two gave the book more depth, thankfully, for without it the story would have drooped from saccharine sweetness. The descriptions of the now-antiquated stores and sweetshops were divine, and the cameos from celebrities like Marlene Dietrich and Judy Garland were quite nice, as well. (Watch out for the sub-plot with Yale...it felt like a forced dilemma for the main character and also quite unrealistic). All in all, I loved seeing New York as it never will be again, especially after 9/11. A lovely look inside a rare moment of time, this book will most definitely cheer you up. That's all it's really there for, I guess. Charming.

Cute. That would be the best word to describe this short, particularly sweet memoir. Going into it, I was waiting for vast accounts of the inner workings of one of the most fantastic stores ever to exist. The tome is more character driven than tell-all, which I would assume stems from the era the author comes from (that is, polite and loyal). I could have done without the dozens of "Ohmygosh!"s that were sprinkled quite liberally throughout the narrative - it was distracting, irritating, and took away credibility from the writer. The naive charm still held me captive, though: I received a glimpse of a time where girls still wore gloves and hats, were polite and charming, and treated everyday as if it were a glamorous event. The backdrop of World War Two gave the book more depth, thankfully, for without it the story would have drooped from saccharine sweetness. The descriptions of the now-antiquated stores and sweetshops were divine, and the cameos from celebrities like Marlene Dietrich and Judy Garland were quite nice, as well. (Watch out for the sub-plot with Yale...it felt like a forced dilemma for the main character and also quite unrealistic). All in all, I loved seeing New York as it never will be again, especially after 9/11. A lovely look inside a rare moment of time, this book will most definitely cheer you up. That's all it's really there for, I guess. Charming.

Not to be confused with the infamous Holly Golightly caper, this charming tale takes us back to the turquoise corridors of Tiffany, where jewels twinkle and customers include Marlene Dietrich and Judy Garland. This time, the heroines are two Iowa-bred "long-limbed, blue eyed blondes" who are traveling to Manhattan to find summer work. The catch? The hordes of other hungry co-ed girls hellbent on the same glamorous goal.

Far from pretentious fare like Nichole Ritchie's "The Truth about Diamonds," this memoir of two college girls hoofing it into Manhattan in search of summer work is a career girl's tale at heart. From their initial dizzy hysteria of job hunting, to working the mysterious connections of a family friend, the story perfectly captures the plummeting feeling of job rejection, and the giddy glee of being hired for even the most menial tasks when set in glamorous Manhattan. With this mindset, Marjorie and her best friend Marty become the first-ever female store pages for Tiffany, delivering packages to the shipping and receiving department. The irony that they work among glittering diamonds and pearls on a salary of $20 is not lost on them, even in 1945 when the book is set.

Indeed, this is period literature, but only in the most lightly pleasing way. From dancing the Charleston to Frank Sinatra's "Let's Call the Whole Thing Off" to scrambling on her hands and knees to recover the precious pearls that have spilled all over the elevator floor on her way to the Tiffany Diamond and Pearl room (yes, it's real), Hart is a charming heroine whose adventures equal an endearing coming-of-age tale, wrought with Tiffany glamour and winsome World War II overtones.

The overall result is a book that is special, light-hearted without being shallow, and perfectly satisfying as a summer beach read. If you want summer reading but need a break from stilettos and cosmopolitans, this little blue jewel of a book will transport you in no time.

Not to be confused with the infamous Holly Golightly caper, this charming tale takes us back to the turquoise corridors of Tiffany, where jewels twinkle and customers include Marlene Dietrich and Judy Garland. This time, the heroines are two Iowa-bred "long-limbed, blue eyed blondes" who are traveling to Manhattan to find summer work. The catch? The hordes of other hungry co-ed girls hellbent on the same glamorous goal.

Far from pretentious fare like Nichole Ritchie's "The Truth about Diamonds," this memoir of two college girls hoofing it into Manhattan in search of summer work is a career girl's tale at heart. From their initial dizzy hysteria of job hunting, to working the mysterious connections of a family friend, the story perfectly captures the plummeting feeling of job rejection, and the giddy glee of being hired for even the most menial tasks when set in glamorous Manhattan. With this mindset, Marjorie and her best friend Marty become the first-ever female store pages for Tiffany, delivering packages to the shipping and receiving department. The irony that they work among glittering diamonds and pearls on a salary of $20 is not lost on them, even in 1945 when the book is set.

Indeed, this is period literature, but only in the most lightly pleasing way. From dancing the Charleston to Frank Sinatra's "Let's Call the Whole Thing Off" to scrambling on her hands and knees to recover the precious pearls that have spilled all over the elevator floor on her way to the Tiffany Diamond and Pearl room (yes, it's real), Hart is a charming heroine whose adventures equal an endearing coming-of-age tale, wrought with Tiffany glamour and winsome World War II overtones.

The overall result is a book that is special, light-hearted without being shallow, and perfectly satisfying as a summer beach read. If you want summer reading but need a break from stilettos and cosmopolitans, this little blue jewel of a book will transport you in no time.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book, fun to hear about life during the 40's and what New York City was like back then. Fun book to read!

This is an interesting story of a young girls experience of working for the summer at Tiffany's jewlers. Light breezy reading.

What a delightful book! Perfect for the ladies on your list. You really feel like you are sharing the girls adventures in New York City during their special summer. 1945 was such a different time. How lucky they were to be a part of it!

I absolutely loved this book. It was well written, funny and an interesting look at life at the end of World War II. I will read it again.

I delighted in this book. SUMMER AT TIFFANY is a gem that its namesake jewelry store can look to with pride.

Very simply, it is a memoir by author Marjorie Hart of the summer of 1945, that last summer during which World War II was raging, when she spent a college vacation working in New York City.

Knowing next to nothing about Manhattan, Marjorie and some of her sorority sisters left Iowa for their big break, having heard that jobs were plentiful in the Big Apple.

Yet finding a position proved more difficult than expected. More unexpectedly, because of the shortages of male staff during wartime, she and her roommate ended up being hired as the first "girl" pages at the elegant jewelry store.

This is a loving, lovely book. Her reports of adventures, innocent and fun, are as evocative as the old movies "My Sister Eileen" or "The Way We Were." Of course, in SUMMER AT TIFFANY, all of these episodes actually took place.

New York in 1945 seems as far away a planet in another galaxy; I was born there myself not more than ten years later, and nothing now remains the same. Still, Marjorie's dreams then, and her memories now, always will be touching--and her fond retelling makes for a wonderful read.

My two daughters and I (and my cousin's daughter) loved this book. It was fun to read this wonderful book written by my mother's cousin. But even if she weren't related, we still would have enjoyed the great story and Mrs. Hart's easy, flowing writing style. Reading about her adventures and the references she made to family were quite fun. Thanks for a great memoir that I am anxious to pass on and recommend to my friends and their daughters.

Okay, let's be honest, YES, it was the Tiffany blue book cover that drew me to this book!!! Beyond the cover the subject captured further attention.
This memoir is a wonderful story of two best friends who decide to leave their Midwestern lives and head into the challenge of life in the big city. They head off to NYC and find jobs working at Tiffany's. This story is wonderful and heart warming and gives an open and honest look at life through the eyes of two young women during a time of change. The friends meet the challenge of limited budgets, proper dress codes, new boyfriends and the backdrop of WWII as it comes to an end. This is a delightful story that is so much fun to read and it gives an understanding of life in the 40's that is impossible not to enjoy.

This is a great story of a young woman's summer in New York in 1945. It's a sweet little read.

This is a charming little book -- a perfect couple hours' read on a hot summer day. It took me back to an interesting and eventful summer I had when I was around the same age. I thought at times it was a bit incomplete -- I would have appreciated more background information about some of the people and places she was writing about. But the author's writing style effectively reflected not only her age when she experienced these events, but the simpler world of that time. Well done.

"Summer at Tiffany" has to be one of the most engaging stories I have read in a very long time. I received this book as a gift from my sister because she knows how much I love the Tiffany store and I ended up reading this book for the story itself. If a book can transcend someone into a time of the past, this is the book. I marvel at the changes in society (1945 - 2007) and how much NYC and Tiffany have changed as well. Ms. Hart's descriptions of people, clothing, relationships, and everyday life (long distance phone calls cost too much to make!) made things seem so incredibly real and personal. I would recommend this to anyone who wants to read about a time period we will [most likely] never experience again and feel as though you were there (NYC 1945, end of WWII) with the girls - this is the book!

This is a delightful book based on the true adventures of two Univeristy of Iowa coeds looking for summer jobs as shop girls in New York City in 1945.

Margorie and Marty scour the streets of Manhattan for work and stumble into unlikely positions: pages at Tiffany & Co. The first women to ever work on the sales floor of the famous jewler's.

Reading about Margorie and Marty's adventures, misadventures, romances and life lessons is like a breath of fresh air...the times were more innocent it seems.

My mom is just two years younger than Marjorie Hart, and so as I read Summer at Tiffany, I could imagine my mom in her place experiencing the summer of 1945 in Manhattan.

What a delightful book and marvelous read! Marjorie Hart does a wonderful job of taking the reader back to a magnificent summer of 1945. As I too have felt like I was "working for Tiffany's" (what a great part of the book!) we have a relationship with Tiffany's and it was super to see New York and Tiffany's through the eyes of a member of the Greatest Generation from the days of WWII. As my wife is from Iowa, it was equally enjoyable reading the book that has a influence of midwestern sensiblity. So, this is highly recommended as the book gives you insight into a wonderful time and experience.

How nice to experience life in New York in the 40's, and at Tiffany!! A refreshing read, which was hard to put down.

I read the book on the airplane on my way to an island vacation. Summer at Tiffanys is wonderfully well-written and captures youthful innocence and curiosity. It is superbly crafted--easy to read, fast paced, and fun. I highly recommend this book for a summer escape.

This was one of the best reads. What a great way to spend a summer especially living back in the 40's. I just kept wishing that it had been me.

A trip to Tiffany always cheers me up, but unfortunately, I won't be visiting Chicago or New York again any time soon. So, what's the next best thing to visiting Tiffany & Co. along Michigan Avenue in Chicago or the one along Fifth Avenue in New York?

READING about WORKING at Tiffany!

This wonderful memoir by 83-year-old Marjorie Hart takes place during the summer of 1945 when she and her best friend, Marty, worked as pages at Tiffany & Co., making them the first female employees ever to work the sales floor. As pages, they were responsible for delivering packages to the repair and shipping department whenever one of the salesmen discretely "rapped" on the counter. There is a really funny story about how Ms. Hart mispronounced one of the salesman's names - which would ultimately cause her trouble later in the story -- because she had misunderstood the person who had told her the salesman's name due to the person's thick Brooklyn accent.

What I find almost more interesting than Ms. Hart's memories of working at Tiffany - there's another really funny story about all the stress she endured while riding in the elevator with a bunch of loose pearls bouncing around as she tried helplessly to catch them -- are the ways she tried to save money! For instance, she cashed in empty soda bottles, at a nickel each, to help pay for her $40 round-trip train ticket from Iowa to New York and budgeted her weekly $20 paycheck right down to the last penny (e.g., ride the subway daily for two nickels, eat a sandwich at the Automat for 15 cents, use penny postcards to write back home -- no 3-cent stamps!)

While the book is a fun light read, there's also some serious moments. Even though Ms. Hart is working at Tiffany -- TIFFANY! -- and having fun adventures in Manhattan with a shipman named Jim during her off hours, World War II is going on, and she's always very mindful of that. There's also a very touching chapter in the book about an army plane that crashed into the Empire State Building on July 28, 1945 that almost left me in tears because it reminded me so much of September 11, 2001.

I'd give this book 10 stars if I could!

This book is a wonderful excursion to a simpler, more innocent time. As WWII winds to a close, two Iowa girls conquer NYC with wide-eyed wonder and fabulous fashion sense. It's a grand, funny, poignant adventure.

Coming to Manhattan with little money and one secondhand reference takes great bravery and pluck, particularly in war-torn America in 1945. Images from movies and the grand sweeping melodies of standard tunes of the era provide Marjorie Hart and her best friend Marty with a jumping-off point as tourists. But as they make do with what little they've brought with them, they end up becoming bonafide New Yorkers for a summer that ends triumphantly with love all around and a VJ Day celebration in Times Square.

The details of the time, the mores and concerns of a young lady in this pre-women's-lib period, are wrought quite skillfully and imaginatively by Hart, a first-time memoirist. A cellist by trade, she never lets go of either her Iowa good sense or her little girl's love of all things romantic and exciting. So she becomes a first-rate tour guide through a New York that remains only between Trump-sized towers and well-known chain stores. The drama --- for example, of saving enough CHANGE to take public transportation each day (a nickel!) or trying to figure out what kind of drink to order in an elegant cafe you've read about in movie magazines your whole life --- is small but never really quaint. There is enough in Hart's experiences for even the most jaded techno-kid of this age to find some commonalities between that world and today's.

But it is the girls' experiences in Tiffany & Co. that make the book what it is. After Marty brazenly drags Marjorie into the store and, using a reference that may or may not come through, more or less demands jobs for them --- making them the first female pages in the history of Tiffany --- their lives take a dramatic and fantastic upswing. Living amongst the rich and famous, if only from 9 to 5, gives the girls a lot to talk about and introduces them both to the sweet side of serious money and the not-so-nice side (gangsters buying jewels with ill-begotten booty gives them the creeps yet proves exciting at the same time).

The other denizens of the floors --- including the secret third floor of Pearls and Diamonds(!), lifers who act like butlers out of an Evelyn Waugh book, and an elevator man direct from a Damon Runyan play --- are wonderfully represented. They provide a safe and secure environment for the girls to learn the ropes of this high-price business, as well as pointers on life that they take to heart. In these passages, Hart's direct prose sparkles like the glow of the famous Tiffany diamond.

The war creates an interesting context for all this movie-magazine madness. The girls meet enlisted men at Barnard dances and must endure the painful news from home when someone they know goes MIA or comes home in a body bag from the war. When a warplane accidentally hits the Empire State Building, Hart writes about the experience of the city in its aftermath so intensely that it almost could be mistaken for a description of 9/11. New York and World War II, atomic bombs and young love all meld together to offset the high-society hijinks of Tiffany, giving SUMMER AT TIFFANY a weight that grounds it in reality while still allowing us the enjoyment of living vicariously through those for whom it is not as daily a concern.

Hart never came back to New York after that summer. Although offered an opportunity to stay on the East Coast and study cello at Yale, she returned to Iowa and became a music educator as well as a musician out west. But her experiences in Manhattan that long-ago summer made some serious indentations on her life card, and she displays great heart in reliving and recounting for us a very special part of her own history and the history of the United States.

--- Reviewed by Jana Siciliano

I've never read a book and grinned the entire time I was reading it. The Summer of Tiffany is about the summer of 1945 when Marjorie Hart and her best friend Marty go to New York for the summer hoping to find jobs. They end up being a part of Tiffany history when they are offered jobs as the first women on the sales floor. If you have even a fraction of a nostalgic side this book will give you a first hand look into what it was like not only in 1945, but from the perspective of a young, innocent girl coming of age. This book was delightful in the memories she shares from her summer romance, to the first time they went to the beach, the inside knowledge of the legendary Tiffany, and the experience of going to clubs and restaurants they'd only read about in Life magazine. Moments when they're gossiping about celebrity sightings left me feeling like I was privy to insider knowledge! That summer they also witnessed an accidental crash of an Army plane into the Empire State Building and the end of WW2. When the war ended and they were in Times Square, I could feel the excitement and really understood the sacrifices that generation had to make and why it was a special moment that we're able to relive because of this wonderful memoir. Well written and quickly paced this book is both relevant and totally entertaining!

Thanks go to Marjorie Hart for giving us the opportunity to share her magical summer in New York as World War II is ending. As a former Iowan growing up in a neighboring town during the same time, I relished her descriptions of the wonders and glamor of New York. Summer at Tiffany is a lively, delightful book. Enjoy!

The story of Summer at Tiffany is just as cute as the gorgeous book cover portrays! This is a quick, easy read that highlights a summer Marjorie Hart spent in NCY during college with her friend Marty during the late 1940's. The pages take you back to a charming and magical era, when shopping at a department store was an elegant experience. The fun times that Marjorie has are all captured in an easy to read and well written manner. This was a feel good book and one I will look forward to re-reading again. Highly recommended!