Mad Men Reading List

The New York Public Library (NYPL) has created a Mad Men Reading List, a collection of 25 titles read by the main characters during the course of the series. These titles are a great way to gain insight into the social and cultural eras in which the series takes place.

DON DRAPER’S PICKS

• Exodus by Leon Uris
  (Episode 106 “Babylon”)
• The Best of Everything by Rona Jaffe
  (Episode 106 “Babylon”)
• Meditations in an Emergency by Frank O’Hara
  (Episode 201 “For Those Who Think Young”)
• The Sound and the Fury : The Corrected Text with Faulkner’s Appendix by William Faulkner
  (Episode 211 “The Jet Set”)
• The Chrysanthemum and the Sword by Ruth Benedict
  (Episode 405 “The Chrysanthemum and the Sword”)
• The Spy Who Came in from the Cold: A George Smiley Novel (George Smiley Novels) by John Le Carre
  (Episode 413 “Tomorrowland”)
• The Fixer by Bernard Malamud
  (Episode 507 “At the Codfish Ball”)
• Odds Against by Dick Francis
  (Episode 509 “Dark Shadows”)
• The Inferno by Dante Alighieri
  (Episode 601-2 “The Doorway”)
• The Last Picture Show by Larry McMurtry
  (Episode 607 “Man With a Plan”)
• Portnoy’s Complaint by Philip Roth
  (Episode 704 “The Monolith”)

ROGER STERLING’S PICK

• Confessions of an Advertising Man by David Ogilvy
  (Episode 307 “Seven Twenty Three”)

JOAN HARRIS’S PICK

• Lady Chatterley’s Lover by D. H. Lawrence
  (Episode 103 “Marriage of Figaro”)

BERT COOPER’S PICK

• Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand
  (Episode 108 “The Hobo Code”)

BETTY DRAPER’S PICKS

• Babylon Revisited: And Other Stories by F. Scott Fitzgerald
  (Episode 204 “Three Sundays”)
• The Group by Mary McCarthy
  (Episode 310 “The Color Blue”)

PETE CAMPBELL’S PICKS

• The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon
  (Episode 508 “Lady Lazarus”)
• Goodnight Moon by Margaret Wise Brown
  (Episode 511 “The Other Woman”)

SALLY DRAPER’S PICKS

• The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon
  (Episode 303 “My Old Kentucky Home”)
• The Twenty-One Balloons by William Pene Du Bois
  (Episode 405 “The Chrysanthemum and the Sword”)
• Nancy Drew: The Clue of the Black Keys by Carolyn Keene
  (Episode 409 “The Beautiful Girls”)
• The Black Cauldron by Lloyd Alexander
  (Episode 509 “Dark Shadows”)
• Rosemary’s Baby by Ira Levin
  (Episode 608 “The Crash”)

LANE PRYCE’S PICK

• Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
  (Episode 306 “Guy Walks Into an Advertising Agency”)

HENRY FRANCIS’S PICK

• Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
  (Episode 306 “Guy Walks Into an Advertising Agency”)

Billy Parrott has also written a more comprehensive blogpost that lists books seen on shelves and lying around on tables during the show.