Mad Women
The Other Side of Life on Madison Avenue in the '60s and Beyond
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
"Breezy and salty." -The New York Times
"Hilarious! Honest, intimate, this book tells it as it was." -Mary Wells Lawrence, author of A Big Life (In Advertising) and founding president of Wells Rich Greene
"Breezy and engaging [though] ...The chief value of Mad Women is the witness it bears for younger women about the snobbery and sexism their mothers and grandmothers endured as the price of entry into mid-century American professional life." -The Boston Globe
"A real-life Peggy Olson, right out of Mad Men." -Shelly Lazarus, Chairman, Ogilvy & Mather
What was it like to be an advertising woman on Madison Avenue in the 60s and 70s - that Mad Men era of casual sex and professional serfdom? A real-life Peggy Olson reveals it all in this immensely entertaining and bittersweet memoir.
Mad Women is a tell-all account of life in the New York advertising world by Jane Maas, a copywriter who succeeded in the primarily male jungle depicted in the hit show Mad Men.
Fans of the show are dying to know how accurate it is: was there really that much sex at the office? Were there really three-martini lunches? Were women really second-class citizens? Jane Maas says the answer to all three questions is unequivocally "yes." Her book, based on her own experiences and countless interviews with her peers, gives the full stories, from the junior account man whose wife almost left him when she found the copy of Screw magazine he'd used to find "a date" for a client, to the Ogilvy & Mather's annual Boat Ride, a sex-and-booze filled orgy, from which it was said no virgin ever returned intact. Wickedly funny and full of juicy inside information, Mad Women also tackles some of the tougher issues of the era, such as unequal pay, rampant, jaw-dropping sexism, and the difficult choice many women faced between motherhood and their careers.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Riffing heavily on the hit television show Mad Men, Maas's book provides the female point of view of the advertising world of the 1960s an environment both chaotic and stodgy. The author, who began her advertising career as a copywriter at Ogilvy & Mather and eventually ascended to become chairman of Earle Palmer Brown, tracks her trajectory and the observations she gathered along the way about race, gender, and the difficulties reconciling a working life with a home life. Narrator Coleen Marlo reads Maas's text crisply and cleanly. She effectively creates distinctive voices for Maas's various co-workers and bosses. However, when reading Maas's prose which at times can be a bit dry Marlo occasionally sounds flat, but this is a minor flaw in an otherwise enjoyable performance. A Thomas Dunne hardcover.
Customer Reviews
Mad women/ working moms
If you are a working mom in a "career" setting, you will appreciate the parallels of the plight of working moms today and in 1960's. There was definitely more inequalities between men and women those days in the corporate world but the insecurities, guilt and constant juggle of mom, wife and career woman is still the same. It is comforting and disturbing at the same time knowing that in 50 yrs we woman are still struggling with our roles in society.
If you are a fan of Mad Men, it is a fun read to see how much the show gets right and how much is creative license.
Easy read and definitely continues the conversation of career moms-is it worth it? Are we making the right choices?
New York New York
I enjoyed this book, I love the show Mad Men. This book is not like Mad Men. I enjoyed her antidotes. I wish the book was longer. I could of kept on reading.