ONTD

"It's Don Draper's world, and we just live in it."

Fans of Mad Men, the television series set in the heady Madison Avenue advertising world of the 1960s, would certainly agree.

The quote comes from a new book, "Kings of Madison Avenue: The Unofficial Guide to Mad Men," which arrived on store shelves Sept. 1, days after the airing of the third season's third episode.

Indeed, with a loyal -- and growing -- viewership, nearly unanimous critical praise and a leading man who's gone from working actor to one of Hollywood's biggest stars, it's hard for fans to imagine life BDD (Before Don Draper).

"Things that burn that bright tend to burn half as long," the book's author Jesse McLean told CTV.ca in a telephone interview. "And still here we are at the beginning of the third season and there's no sense of it ebbing at all. Quite the opposite, the ratings are up and the impact is up and people are talking about it even more."

When Mad Men burst onto the scene in July 2007, it was a smart show boasting low ratings but critical accolades.
But its note-perfect depiction of the swingin' sixties and life at fictional ad agency Sterling Cooper -- fedora-clad men cracking wise and bedding the secretaries at the office, bored housewives complaining about their husbands, everyone with a cigarette in hand -- have made it one of the most talked-about shows since The Sopranos.

"A lot of it is sold on the surface, on the style, on the fashion of it, on the set design, and that's great, but that's not the kind of thing that's going to sustain really strong viewership," McLean says. "And as much attention that is paid to clothes, to typewriters, to Xerox machines, is paid to the characters and the psychology and the background."
So much so that a companion guide is almost required reading to keep many of the cultural references from flying over the heads of readers born after 1962.

"I think that aspect of the show is what not only inspires second and third watchings of episodes, but rewards it as well," McLean says. "I think there are a lot of things there that you watch for the first time and certainly there is a sense, although it's kind of a relaxed pace, that there really is just a lot of layers that are coming at you as you watch it."
A lean, but jam-packed, 222 pages, "Kings of Madison Avenue" goes beyond a detailed episode guide (though it has that, too) with discussions on the cultural, social and political influences that inform the show's characters and plotlines.

The book, written in the snappy style of a Sterling Cooper ad, includes short essays on elements of the cultural zeitgeist that inform the show, such as:

• The publication of "Sex and the Single Girl," the book by future Cosmopolitan editor Helen Gurley Brown that is on one hand a tale of sexual liberation and on the other a how-to manual for landing a husband.
• Real-life Madison Avenue ad agency Doyle Dane & Bernbach's ground-breaking advertisements for Volkswagen that turned the advertising world on its head.
• The so-called Age of Anxiety literature, and its seminal work, Richard Yates's "Revolutionary Road," which paints a bleak portrait of post-war American prosperity.
• The election of a young Catholic president named John F. Kennedy and the emerging Civil Rights movement led by Martin Luther King, Jr.

There are also cast biographies, fun tips for hosting a Mad Men-themed party and a suggested tour of New York that includes landmarks mentioned in the show that one can still visit.

The book is a reference guide to a docudrama about a world that "wasn't really, in the grand scheme of things, that long ago but somehow seems worlds apart from what we live today," McLean says.

But it also helps remind viewers that at the heart of Mad Men lie the characters and the evolution of their relationships.

"In the stories for each character and the path that they go down, it's never what you would expect. It always manages to go somewhere else that still somehow feels very true," McLean says. "And I think that because there's such importance given to the dimensions of the characters that it goes far beyond any kind of stereotypical notes of the era or of the industry that they're in."

Fans of the show are no doubt eager to learn how the characters' stories will play out (Will Don and his wife Betty stay together? Will secretary-turned-copywriter Peggy move up the ladder to partner at Sterling Cooper, and find a man along the way? Will Don and Roger fix their fractured relationship?).

But McLean predicts that Mad Men will take its time answering these questions before it ends with the sixties and Sterling Cooper closing up shop.

"I think what will happen is the show's going to end and not everything is going to be tied up in a bow," McLean says, "because nothing is really done that way in this series."







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Sorry, not bolding it... if you're enough of a Mad Men fan, you'll read it all (I'm assuming).