The Mad Men Book Club

Courtesy of AMC Want to read like Don Draper? Just follow The Daily Beast’s Ayn Rand-loving, Nazi-satirizing, suburban angst-inducing fall reading list.

Despite the booze, clothes, and mid-afternoon romps, knowledge on Mad Men isn’t exclusively carnal. Around the curves of the show’s hedonism is a different kind of sensibility, a more high-minded one: Colleagues burn when copywriter Ken Cosgrove lands a story in The Atlantic (“Tapping a Maple on a Cold Vermont Morning”); Don Draper stumbles through New York, puzzling over Frank O’Hara’s 1957 Meditations in an Emergency.

Of course, this is Madison Avenue we’re talking about. Don’s reading tends to be as much about enrichment as enlightenment. If the ad man wants to know What Women Want, he picks up Rona Jaffe’s 1958 The Best of Everything. Faced with a similarly challenging conundrum, selling tourism to Israel (What Jews Want), he grabs Leon Uris’ Exodus.

As the third season of the AMC show premieres Sunday, The Daily Beast offers some advice on how to read like a Mad Man:

The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit
by Sloan Wilson (1955).

Gregory Peck starred in the film version released one year later. Comedian Jimmy Barrett piques Don by nicknaming him “the man in the gray flannel suit.”

The Organization Man
by William H. Whyte, Jr. (1956).

The Black Swan of its day, Whyte’s book became the standard text on the workplace and its impact on American society. A writer at Fortune, Whyte profiled the same corporate heads that Sterling Cooper, the advertising firm of Mad Men, try to woo.

Atlas Shrugged
by Ayn Rand (1957).

The eccentric co-owner of Sterling Cooper, Bert Cooper, is an admirer of the philosopher and author Rand. Her Atlas Shrugged profiles the terror of government control; its emphasis on individualism and free markets has made it a popular text once again in these days. Among noteworthy acolytes was former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan.

Meditations on an Emergency
by Frank O’Hara (1957).

With Greenwich Village seen as some exotic land for the men of Sterling Cooper, avant-garde culture is generally treated with disdain or confusion. Apparently, there’s some guy name Bob Dylan singing down there. They also smoke pot. The show tries to bridge the gap between the two places with Don’s embrace of Frank O’Hara’s poetry.

The Best of Everything
by Rona Jaffe (1958).

Jaffe was the Candace Bushnell of the Atomic Age, painting a picture of the life of single working women in New York City. Don reads this one in bed next to his wife Betty.

Exodus
by Leon Uris (1958).

When the Israeli Department of Tourism comes knocking, Don checks out this work of historical fiction about the founding of the State of Israel. Of course, he hopes it will also provide insight into the state of a Jewish woman he’s pursuing. The book’s popularity increased in 1960 with the release of a film version, staring Paul Newman as the protagonist Ari Ben Canaan.