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The Definitive Mad Men Summer Reading List

1:05 pm Thursday Jul 22, 2010 by Judy Berman

One of the things we love most about Mad Men (and we’re big fans, so it’s hard to pick) is that the show is chock full of significant period details. And few things say more about a character or era than books. From its first season, the impeccably literate series has showcased everything from popular novels of the early ’60s to classic literature. After the jump, we’ve compiled an extensive list of books featured in, based on, or that inspired Mad Men, broken down by season. Happy — or, more realistically, dramatic and depressing but still valuable and gripping — reading!

Season One

The Best of Everything — Rona Jaffe (1958)
Don snuggles up to this book in bed with Betty. So, what’s a manly man like our hero doing with what basically amounted to ’50s chick lit? We’re guessing market research… which may also be exactly what his marriage amounts to, in the end.
Read: An excerpt of The Best of Everything

Atlas Shrugged — Ayn Rand
Basically all you need to know about mysterious Sterling Cooper partner Bert Cooper is that he’s obsessed with Ayn Rand. In season one, he tells Don, “I believe we are alike. You are a productive and reasonable man, and in the end, completely self interested” and tells him to buy a copy of Atlas Shrugged. And that’s pretty much the inspiration behind Cooper’s entire cultured, eccentric, capitalist persona.
Read: An excerpt of Atlas Shrugged
Watch: Bert preaches the gospel of Rand

Exodus — Leon Uris (1958)
More research for Don: In an episode that finds him taking meetings with the Israeli Tourism Bureau and courting beguiling Jewess Rachel Menken, our hero turns to Uris’ novel about Israel’s founding to better understand both.

Lady Chatterley’s Lover — D.H. Lawrence
Back in the early ’60s, it was Lawrence’s banned opus — not Twilight — that ladies passed around the office. In one of the show’s first few episodes, Joan returns the book to a friend, quipping, “It’s another testimony to how most people think that marriage is a joke.” Despite the office manager’s backhanded warnings, Peggy eagerly snatches up the book.
Read: Lady Chatterley’s Lover in full, courtesy of Project Gutenberg
Watch: Joan, Peggy and friends talk Lady Chatterley

Babylon Revisited and Other Stories — F. Scott Fitzgerald
Seeing as Mad Men is, among other things, a mid-century update of The Great Gatsby, it makes sense that Fitzgerald would come into the series sooner or later. After Arthur, the cute stable boy, recommends that Betty read the novella “A Diamond as Big as the Ritz” back in season one, we find her with her nose stuck in the collection that includes it.
Read: “The Diamond as Big as the Ritz”

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