They’re back, and they’re hard to miss. The suave men and women of Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce are back on AMC – along with their slick suits, constant smirks, and Lucky Strikes (or are they Camels now?). We’ve waited a long time to see how Don and Megan get along, and how Joanie will make her comeback. We can’t – despite ourselves – wait for the next secret love affair or John Deere lawnmower accident. But even now that season five has begun, we still have to wait a long time between episodes.
Or… you can come to your nearest NPL location. (You knew that was coming).
Try some of these books to get your ‘Mad Men’ fix in the meantime (synopses from our catalog):
1. The Real Mad Men by Andrew Cracknell;
Written by a former copywriter working during the Creative Revolution of the 1960s, Cracknell’s account of the heyday of advertising currently being explored on AMC’s hit show ‘Mad Men’ is a terrific supplement to the show, as well as a primer on the evolution of the industry.
2. Mad Men Unbuttoned by Natasha Vargas-Cooper;
Inspired by the TV series, L.A. freelance writer Vargas-Cooper launched a nicely designed and engaging blog, the Footnotes of Mad Men, to survey not only the show but also the real-world historical and cultural artifacts of that period. Now her attractive blog has been adapted into an equally attractive book.
3. The Unofficial Mad Men Cookbook by Judy Gelman;
Part cookbook, part annotated episode guide, this entertaining read has everything the die-hard Mad Men fan needs to host a fantastic cocktail party. In chapters covering cocktails, appetizers, salads, main dishes, and desserts, retro recipes are introduced by a scene from the show and put in historical context.
4. Mad Women by Jane Maas;
Mad Women is a tell-all account of life in the New York advertising world of the 1960s and 70s from Jane Maas, a female copywriter who succeeded in the primarily male environment portrayed by the hit TV show Mad Men.
5. Mad Men on the Couch by Stephanie Newman.
A modern psychological analysis of the characters from the popular television show featuring the advertising world of 1960s Madison Avenue.
And these fiction books evoke that same moody world of 1960s suburban and business life:
6. Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates;
The devastating effects of work, adultery, rebellion, and self-deception slowly destroy the once successful marriage of Frank and April Wheeler, a suburban American couple.
7. The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit by Sloan Wilson;
A novel about the American search for purpose in a world dominated by business. Tom and Betsy Rath share a struggle to find contentment in their hectic and material culture while several other characters fight essentially the same battle, but struggle in it for different reasons.
8. Rabbit, Run by John Updike;
Twenty-two-year-old Rabbit Angstrom is a salesman in a local department store, father of a preschool-age son, and husband to an alcoholic wife who was his second-best high school sweetheart. The squalor and tragedy of their lives reminds us that salvation is a personal undertaking.
9. The Stepford Wives by Ira Levin;
Moving to the “ideal” suburban community of Stepford, Connecticut, with her husband and children, Joanna Eberhart is stunned by the subservient and complacent nature of the women of the town and soon discovers the terrifying secret behind the women’s behavior.
10. The Hours by Michael Cunningham.
Cunningham neatly cuts back and forth in time among three women: Woolf, whom he portrays in the throes of writing Mrs. Dalloway and contemplating suicide; Laura, a young wife and mother suffocating in the confines of her tidy little life in L.A. in 1949; and Clarissa, who is giving a party in the present in New York City for her closest friend, Richard, a writer dying of AIDS.