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.
Fans of the show are dying to
know how accurate it is: did people really have that much sex in 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. And her book, based on her own experiences and
countless interviews with her peers, gives the full stories, from the
junior account man whose wife nearly left him when she found the copy of
Screw magazine he'd used to find "entertainment" for a client,
to the Ogilvy & Mather agency's legendary annual sex-and-booze-filled Boat Ride, from which it was said no virgin ever returned
intact. Wickedly funny and full of juicy inside information, Mad Women also
tackles the tougher issues of the era, such as equal pay, rampant
jaw-dropping sexism, and the difficult choice many women faced between
motherhood and their careers.
