Biblio File, 24 Frames per Second

The "Mad Men" Reading List by Billy Parrott, Associate Director, Stavros Niarchos Foundation Library (SNFL)February 27, 2012

UPDATE: Click here to see the Official New York Public Library and AMC Mad Men Reading List!

You might remember my original list, which will always be available here.

This revised list will be easier to follow and, like my previous list, it will be updated as books appear in new episodes. Details on literary references will continue in the comments field. As mentioned in my original blog post, some of the books on the list are featured more prominently in the series than others, but all are a great way to gain insight into the episodes and the social and cultural times in which the series is set.

You might also be interested in taking a look at the Sally Draper reading list, the Glen Bishop reading list, the Mad Men Mystery Solved blog post, and my Mad Men and Sally Draper reading lists on BiblioCommons.

For #MadMenReading related discussions and other news, you can follow me and Mid-Manhattan Library on Twitter and Facebook.

Lastly, as any ad man will tell you, a picture is worth a thousand words, so be sure to stop by Mid-Manhattan Library's Art and Picture Collections for all your visual resource needs!

The conversation is about to begin again. Pour yourself another scotch, and enjoy!

Jump to Season 1, Season 2, Season 3, Season 4, Season 5, Season 6

Multiple Episodes >>

Season 7

Episode 14 - "Person to Person"

The Goodbye Look / Ross MacDonald (click here for more details)

Conversations on Living: 2nd Series / Jiddu Krishnamurti, and Gestalt Therapy: Excitement and Growth in the Human Personality / Frederick S. Perls (click here for more details)

Episode 13 - "The Milk and Honey Route" (click here for more details)

The Godfather / Mario Puzo

The Woman of Rome / Alberto Moravia

Hawaii / James Michener, The Andromeda Strain / Michael Crichton

Episode 12 - "Lost Horizon"

Dora, An Analysis of A Case of Hysteria / Sigmond Freud

On the Road / Jack Kerouac (click here for more details)

Episode 8 - "Severance"

Mildred Pierce / James M. Cain, U.S.A. Trilogy / John Dos Passos (click here for more details)

Episode 6 - "The Strategy"

Katie Mulholland / Catherine Cookson (click here for more details)

The Ceremony of Innocence / Ronald Ribman

Episode 4 - "The Monolith"

Portnoy's Complaint / Philip Roth

From the Earth to the Moon / Jules Verne (click here for more details)

Listen to the Warm / Rod McKuen (click here for more details)

The Detective / Roderick Thorp, Shadow of a Bull / Maia Wojciechowska (click here and here for more details)

Episode 3 - "Field Trip"

The American Way of Death / Jessica Mitford

Frankenstein / Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, Dracula / Bram Stoker (click here for more details)

Better Homes and Gardens Junior Cook Book: For the Hostess and Host of Tomorrow

Episode 1 - "Time Zones"

A Small Town in Germany / John Le Carré (click here for more details)

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer / Mark Twain (click here for more details)

Season 7 Promotional Cast Photo

The Penny Wars / Elliott Baker (click here for more information)

Season 6

Episode 12 - "The Quality of Mercy" (click here for more details)

Evolution / Ruth E. Moore (click here for more details)

Episode 11 - "Favors"

Nicholas and Alexandra / Robert K. Massie (click here for more details)

Episode 10 - "A Tale of Two Cities" (click here for more details)

Bhagavad Gita (click here for more details)

How I Raised Myself From Failure to Success In Selling / Frank Bettger (click here for more details)

Episode 8 - "The Crash"

Rosemary's Baby / Ira levin

I Ching : The Book of Change / John Blofeld

Valley of the Dolls / Jacqueline Susann (click here for more details)

Episode 7 - "Man With a Plan"

The Last Picture Show / Larry McMurtry

Episode 6 - "For Immediate Release"

Something / Ralph Waldo Emerson (click here for more details)

Sterling's Gold / Roger Sterling

Episode 5 - "The Flood"

Topaz / Leon Uris

Episode 1 and 2- "The Doorway"

The Inferno / Dante Alighieri, translated by John Ciardi (click here for more details)

Julius Caesar / William Shakespeare

Season 5

Episode 13 - "The Phantom"

Third Girl / Agatha Christie (click here for more details)

Twice 22 / Ray Bradbury, Tai-Pan / James Clavell, The Smokejumpers / Randle M. Hurst, The Sunday Gentleman / Irving Wallace (click here for more details)

Episode 12 - "Commissions and Fees"

Nat Turner's Slave Rebellion / Herbert Aptheker (click here for more details)

Episode 11 - "The Other Woman"

Goodnight Moon / Margaret Wise Brown

Nature / Ralph Waldo Emerson (Click here for more details)

Episode 9 - "Dark Shadows"

The Black Cauldron / Lloyd Alexander (Click here for more details)

Odds Against / Dick Francis

"Ozymandias" / Percy Bysshe Shelley (click here for more details)

Episode 8 - "Lady Lazarus"

The Crying of Lot 49 / Thomas Pynchon

Episode 7 - "At the Codfish Ball"

The Fixer / Bernard Malamud (click here for more details)

The Berlitz Self-Teacher: French

Episode 6 - "Far Away Places"

The Tibetan Book of the Dead

The Life of Greece / Will Durant (click here for more details)

Episode 4 - "Mystery Date"

Where Love Has Gone / Harold Robbins (click here for more details)

Episode 3 - "Tea Leaves"

Mein Kampf / Adolf Hitler (click here for more details)

Sterling’s Gold / Roger Sterling (click here for more details)

Episode 1 and 2 - "A Little Kiss"

Johnny Got His Gun / Dalton Trumbo

The Sand Pebbles / Richard McKenna

A Thousand Days / John F. Kennedy in the White House / Arthur Schlesinger

Season 4

Episode 13 — "Tomorrowland"

You Are Not the Target: A Practical Manual of How to Cope with a World of Bewildering Change / Laura Archera Huxley, Gazella / Stuart Cloete (See 1/21/12 update for more details)

The Spy Who Came in From the Cold / John Le Carré

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn / Mark Twain

Episode 11 — "Chinese Wall"

Meeting with Japan / Fosco Maraini

Games People Play: The Psychology of Human Relationships / Eric Berne

Sterling’s Gold / Roger Sterling

Episode 10 - "Hands and Knees"

The Miracle Worker / William Gibson

Episode 9 — "The Beautiful Girls"

The Clue of the Black Keys / Carolyn Keene
(See The Sally Draper reading list for more details)

Episode 5 — "The Chrysanthemum and the Sword"

The Twenty-One Balloons / William Pène DuBois
(See "A Mad Men Mystery Solved" for more details)

The Chrysanthemum and the Sword / Ruth Benedict

The Horse That Liked Sandwiches / Vivian L. Thompson

Season 3

Episode 10 — "The Color Blue"

The Group / Mary McCarthy

Helping Yourself with Psychiatry / Frank Caprio, Set Theory and Logic / Robert Stoll, Meeting with Japan / Fosco Maraini, The Corps / W.E.B. Griffin
(See 10/23/10 update for more details)

Episode 9 — "Wee Small House"

The Bible

Episode 7 — "Seven Twenty Three"

Confessions of an Advertising Man / David Ogilvy

Be My Guest / Conrad Hilton
(See 10/23/10 update for more details)

Episode 6 — "Guy Walks into an Advertising Agency"

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer / Mark Twain
(See 10/23/10 update for more details)

Episode 3 — "My Old Kentucky Home"

The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire / Edward Gibbon

Episode 2 — "Love Among the Ruins"

The Compact Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary
(See 10/20/10 update #2 for more details)

Season 2

Episode 11 — "Jet Set"

The Sound and the Fury / William Faulkner

Episode 10 — "The Inheritance"

Junior Classics Volume One (Fairy Tales And Fables) and Volume Seven (The Animal Book)

Episode 9 — "Six Month Leave"

Ship of Fools / Katherine Anne Porter

Episode 8 — "A Night to Remember"

Admiral Hornblower in the West Indies / C. S. Forester
(See 1/22/12 update for more details)

Episode 4 — "Three Sundays"

“A Diamond as Big as the Ritz” from Babylon Revisited and Other Stories / F. Scott Fitzgerald
(See "A Mad Men Mystery Solved" for more details)

Episode 3 — "The Benefactor"

Marjorie Morningstar / Herman Wouk

Episode 2 — "Flight 1"

The Agony and the Ecstasy / Irving Stone (click here for more details)

Episode 1 — "For Those Who Think Young"

Meditations in an Emergency / Frank O’Hara

Season 1

Episode 8 — "The Hobo Code"

Atlas Shrugged / Ayn Rand

The Crisis of the Old Order / Arthur Schlesinger Jr.
The Americans: The Colonial Experience / Daniel Boorstin

Episode 6 — "Babylon"

The Best of Everything / Rona Jaffe

Exodus / Leon Uris

Episode 4 — "New Amsterdam"

Nursery Friends from France / translated by Olive Beaupre Miller

Italy / Herbert Kubly and the editors of Life

Episode 3 — "Marriage of Figaro"

Lady Chatterley's Lover / D. H. Lawrence

Episode 1 — "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes"

The Crisis of the Old Order / Arthur Schlesinger Jr.

The View from Chivo / H. Allen Smith, The Peking Man is Missing / Claire Taschdjian
La Presidenta / Lois Gould, Masterpieces of World Literature in Digest Form / Frank Magill

Multiple episodes

Better Homes and Gardens New Cook Book

Betty Crocker's Hostess Cookbook

The Image, or What Happened to the American Dream / Daniel Boorstin

Sex and the Single Girl / Helen Gurley Brown

“The Swimmer” / John Cheever

How to Predict What People Will Buy / Louis Cheskin

The Real Mad Men: The Renegades of Madison Avenue and the Golden Age of Advertising / Andrew Cracknell

From Those Wonderful Folks Who Gave You Pearl Harbor / Jerry Della Femina

The Strategy of Desire / Ernest Dichter

Handbook of Consumer Motivations / Ernest Dichter

Memoirs of a Beatnik / Diane di Prima

The Conquest of Cool / Thomas Frank

The Feminine Mystique / Betty Friedan

Mid-Century Ads: Advertising from the Mad Men Era / Jim Heimann

The Arrangement / Elia Kazan

Motivation in Advertising: Motives That Make People Buy / Pierre Martineau

Peyton Place / Grace Metalious

The Hidden Persuaders / Vance Packard

Swimming in the Steno Pool: A Retro Guide to Making it in the Office / Lynn Peril

The Lonely Crowd / David Riesman

Heaven's Bride: The Unprintable Life of Ida C. Craddock, American Mystic, Scholar, Sexologist, Martyr, and Madwoman / Leigh Eric Schmidt

The Hucksters / Frederic Wakeman

The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit / Sloan Wilson

Revolutionary Road / Richard Yates

Books About the Show

The Fashion File / Janie Bryant

Mad Men and Philosophy: Nothing Is as It Seems / edited by Rob Carveth and James South

Mad Men: Dream Come True TV / edited by Gary Edgerton

The Unofficial Mad Men Cookbook / Judy Gelman

Mad Men: The Illustrated World / Dyna Moe

Mad Men on the Couch: Analyzing the Minds of the Men and Women of the Hit Tv Show / Newman, Stephanie

Analyzing Mad Men: Critical Essays on the Television Series / edited by Scott Stoddart

Mad Men Unbuttoned: A Romp Through 1960s America / Natasha Vargas-Cooper

View all posts by Billy Parrott

Comments

Patron-generated content represents the views and interpretations of the patron, not necessarily those of The New York Public Library. For more information see NYPL's Website Terms and Conditions.

Mad Men discussion group

Submitted by Ellen Druda (not verified) on February 29, 2012 - 2:26pm

Going to start a season 1 discussion group at the library in april! I'm using your list (with credit to you) on a bookmark. Nice work!

Great idea!

Submitted by Billy Parrott on March 1, 2012 - 8:53am

Let us know how the discussion goes!

Compliments

Submitted by mauro (not verified) on March 6, 2012 - 3:01pm

A great work! I love the Mad Man series

update this for season 6!

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on November 29, 2012 - 2:00am

update this for season 6!

Will do!

Submitted by Billy Parrott on November 29, 2012 - 9:02am

This list will keep going as long as the show does! The Hawaii beach preview with "Dante's Inferno" will have to hold you over until Season 6 starts. Thanks!

add a new novel

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on March 30, 2013 - 5:09pm

SPLIT THIRTY -- just published. Nails Madison Avenue in the early '70s.

thanks!

Submitted by Billy Parrott on April 4, 2013 - 2:11pm

Thanks for reading!

January 7, 1968 Best Sellers

Submitted by Billy Parrott on April 9, 2013 - 10:34am

The season 6 premiere has a shot of the front page of the January 1, 1968 New York Times so we know when the episode took place. The top 10 New York Times best sellers for the week of January 7, 1968 were: 1) The Confessions of Nat Turner, by William Styron 2) Topaz, by Leon Uris 3) Christy, by Catherine Marshall 4) The Gabriel Hounds, by Mary Stewart 5) The Instrument, by John O'Hara 6) The Exhibitionist, by Henry Sutton 7) The Chosen, by Chaim Potok 8) Where Eagles Dare, by Alistair MacLean 9) The President's Plane is Missing, by Robert J. Serling 10) Rosemary's Baby, by Ira Levin

June 2, 1968 Best Sellers

Submitted by Billy Parrott on May 16, 2013 - 8:23am

Season 6 Episode 7 ended on June 6, 1968. The top 10 New York Times best sellers for the week of June 2, 1968 were: 1) Airport, by Arthur Hailey 2) Couples, by John Updike 3) Myra Breckinridge, by Gore Vidal 4) Topaz, by Leon Uris 5) Vanished, by Fletcher Knebel 6) The Confessions of Nat Turner, by William Styron 7) Testimony of Two Men, by Taylor Caldwell 8) The Tower of Babel, by Morris West 9) Christy, by Catherine Marshall 10) Tunc, by Lawrence Durrell

November 24, 1968 Best Sellers

Submitted by Billy Parrott on June 24, 2013 - 2:45pm

Season 6 ended during Thanksgiving 1968. The top 10 New York Times best sellers for that week were: 1) The Salzburg Connection, by Helen MacInnes 2) Preserve and Protect, by Allen Drury 3) Airport, by Arthur Hailey 4) A Small Town in Germany, by John le Carré 5) The Hurricane Years, by Cameron Hawley 6) Couples, by John Updike 7) Testimony of Two Men, by Taylor Caldwell 8) True Grit, by Charles Portis 9) The Senator, by Drew Pearson 10) The First Circle, by Alexander Solzhenitsyn

Wow.

Submitted by Vonzaku (not verified) on January 28, 2015 - 1:43pm

Wow. I searched to see if anyone compiled a list of the books that appeared on the show but I didn't really expect to find them , heh. thanks!

Thank you!

Submitted by Billy Parrott on January 28, 2015 - 3:52pm

Be sure to check out the other list links at the beginning of the post!

AMAZING

Submitted by Cameron (not verified) on April 9, 2015 - 2:45pm

thank you thank you thank you thank you

The Milk & Honey Route

Submitted by Rich (not verified) on May 13, 2015 - 9:30pm

The name of S7 E13 is a direct reference to The Milk and Honey Route: A Handbook for Hobos by Dean Stiff http://www.abaa.org/book/61687641

excellent!

Submitted by Billy Parrott on May 14, 2015 - 10:44am

Thanks! The list has been updated!

re: SELLING BOOKS TO MAD MEN

Submitted by PAT (not verified) on May 18, 2015 - 7:13pm

Over eight years ago VAGABOND BOOKS from Pasadena, Ca. got a call from a woman named Ellen. She explained that she was the prop master for a new show, MAD MEN, on AMC. For the past seven seasons, we have provided vintage hardcover and softcover books for them including: THE GODFATHER, SLAUGHTERHOUSE FIVE, WALL STREET JUNGLE, VALLEY OF THE DOLLS, PORNOY’S COMPLAINT , six Jewish Prayer books from 1969, Sally’s school books and Betty’s Freud paperback for college. The producers required that all the books were historically correct, tied specifically to the year portrayed in the show and in like new condition. Every year we sold them boxes of books published in the year they were filming. This arrangement led us on many fun and interesting adventures to locate books for them. For example, the opening shot for season six shows Don Draper reading a paperback copy of DANTE’S INFERNO sitting on the beach in Hawaii. The first few immortal lines of this classic were read to the viewers in a voice-over that established the motif for the entire season. Unable to locate the exact copy required for this scene through the usual channels, we finally located the as new paperback in a library bookstore in Atascadero, Ca. only a couple of days before shooting began. Naturally the books we provided had to look new. Not an easy task for popular culture books, especially the paperback titles that were made to be read and discarded. They are now 50 years old and more difficult to find that the first editions. The one collectible copy of an easily recognizable hardcover book that we provided was Thomas Pynchon’s THE CRYING OF LOT 49 in a fine dustjacket, naturally. Pete is reading it on the train. We appreciate the importance that books played in this show, which regularly reminded the large audience of viewers to read books. We are sad to see this great show end. We will miss the thrill of seeing our old books on new episodes, but happily we’ll still be able to see them on re-runs for years to come.

Missing at Least Two

Submitted by Henry (not verified) on March 1, 2018 - 5:32am

Wow is this impressive! I was looking for a complete list and here it is... I am in the process of watching the series again and would like to add that the script mentions at least two books that you do not have on your list (again, they would not have screen shots attached to them, they are only mentioned in dialogue)... Paul Kinsey refers to a situation as "Darkness at Noon", novel by Arthur Koestler, and Draper is referred to at least once as "The Man in the Grey Flannel Suit", novel by Sloan Wilson. I there was a Joseph Conrad reference as well (refers to Conrad and travelling "the river") but I'm not certain if they ever specifically mentions the Heart of Darkness. Thank you, thank you, thank you to this lists creator!