Mad Men

Gary Edgerton's comprehensive understanding of Mad Men makes this book a delicious feast for readers. With production research, astute analysis, and detailed readings throughout, Edgerton demonstrates why Mad Men remains one of the smartest and most culturally relevant dramas produced by American television.

~Karen McNally, Editor of American Television During a Television Presidency (Wayne State University Press, 2021) and Co-Editor of the Legacy of Mad Men

To understand how and why Mad Men made history, read this book! Gary Edgerton offers here a much-needed and comprehensive historian's perspective on a historic and historical TV series. For TV lovers and history buffs alike.

~Marjolaine Boutet, American Studies Professor at Sorbonne-Paris-Nord University and Tv Series Critic

Gary Edgerton's meticulous research and industrial/cultural expertise has yielded a rich study of Mad Men that those familiar with this acclaimed show will treasure. It provides a 'one-stop' account by deploying the multifaceted analysis that is Edgerton's forte, allowing Mad Men's significance to be demonstrated socioculturally, creatively, and industrially. This fascinating book explains why Mad Men—a show about advertising in the 1960s yet one whose overarching obsession is the 'high-wire act' performed by Don Draper—so successfully engaged its contemporary audience through its critical reassessment of a much-celebrated yet manifestly flawed past.

~Trisha Dunleavy, Associate Professor in Media and Communication, Te Herenga Waka, Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand

From the first scene ('I love smoking') to the last ('I'd like to buy the world a Coke'), Mad Men was all about packaging. With compact precision, venerable television historian Gary Edgerton describes how this remarkable series employed the new aptitudes of twenty-first-century television to repackage the 1960s.

~Robert Thompson, Professor of Television and Popular Culture, Syracuse University

As a Triple Crown historian, critic, and fan, the ever-eloquent Gary Edgerton dexterously shape-shifts through the period drama as if a partner in the Sterling Cooper Ad Agency, Don Draper's psychotherapist, and Matthew Weiner's production assistant. The keenly crafted chronicle is comprehensive and richly contextualized, a graceful and singular exploration of a touchstone series in which Edgerton identifies, interprets, and illuminates nuances that the rest of us mere Mad Men mortals overlook. Profound and penetrating are understatements. This is another casually brilliant masterpiece from one of the preeminent and prolific voices in media culture criticism.

~George Plasketes, Professor of Media Studies, Auburn University