"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
"A real-life Peggy Olson, right out of Mad Men." --
Shelly Lazarus, Chairman, Ogilvy & Mather
"Breezy and salty." -The New York
Times
"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
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.
