 | Mad Men - Season One
Buy new: $32.99 / Used from: $18.59 If you have never watched the series, start here. It's a continuing storyline, so it's best to watch the episodes and seasons in order.
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 | Mad Men: Season 2
Buy new: $17.99 / Used from: $16.99 Once you've finished watching Season 1, continue feeding your addiction here.
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 | The Best of Everything
Buy new: $13.49 / Used from: $6.49 Setting: Madison Avenue's publishing industry, 1959. Focuses on four female characters: a go-getter "Peggy" type, a sexy "Joan" type, a naive "Lois" type, and career-driven spinster who serves as a cautionary tale for the younger gals. Sexist male co-workers revolve around all of them. Based on the 1958 novel by Rona Jaffe (which I have not read yet, but plan to).
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 | The Apartment
Buy new: $13.49 / Used from: $3.99 Setting: New York City, 1959. Like Pete Campbell in "Mad Men," corporate drone Bud Baxter is desperate to climb the corporate ladder, and finally discovers a way: by lending his apartment to execs needing a private place to meet up with their mistresses. And like Pete's Peggy, a woman complicates Bud's life. One of my all-time favorite movies.
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 | The Seven Year Itch
Buy new: $11.49 / Used from: $5.93 Setting: New York City, 1955. After the annual mass exodus of wives and children from sweltering Manhattan to the country for the summer, one of the born-again bachelors who remain behind to work discovers a sexy blonde living in the apartment above.
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 | Revolutionary Road (Movie Tie-in Edition) (Vintage Contemporaries) by Richard Yates
Buy new: $7.99 / Used from: $0.01 Setting: Connecticut & New York City, 1955. After moving from the city to the 'burbs, Frank and April Wheeler's marriage starts to fall apart. "Mad Men" fans will see the similarity to Don and Betty Draper's troubles at home. If you haven't seen the movie, read the book first. If you've seen the movie, read the book, too -- it better explains the character's actions.
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 | The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan
Buy new: $10.85 / Used from: $4.50 Nonfiction, first published in 1963. For a better understanding of why Betty Draper is unhappy (besides the fact that she has a philandering husband), read Betty Friedan's description of "The Problem That Has No Name."
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 | Meditations in an Emergency by Frank O'Hara
Buy new: $10.08 / Used from: $8.33 Poetry, first published in 1957. I confess I have never read this collection of poetry, but it figures prominently in "Mad Men": In Season 2's premiere episode, Don Draper reads a key passage (in a voice-over) from one of the book's poems, "Mayakovsky," and then sends a copy of the book to an unknown recipient. And Season 2's finale episode is titled "Meditations in an Emergency."
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 | Kings of Madison Avenue: The Unofficial Guide to Mad Men by Jesse McLean
Buy new: $12.21 / Used from: $10.15 I have no idea if this will be any good, but I'm intrigued by the title and will probably pre-order it!
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 | BUtterfield 8
Buy new: $5.79 / Used from: $3.65 Francine mentions this movie in Season 2's premiere episode, as Betty tells her about running into an old friend who now works as a call girl. Released in 1960, the film stars Elizabeth Taylor as a New York City "party girl."
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 | Breakfast At Tiffany's - Paramount Centennial Collection (Mastered in High Definition)
Buy new: $16.49 / Used from: $10.78 Setting: New York City, 1961. A movie about another New York City "party girl," this time played by Audrey Hepburn.
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 | A Summer Place
Buy new: $16.49 / Used from: $8.39 Setting: Maine, 1959. Two former childhood sweethearts are unexpectedly reunited 20 years later at the Maine summer resort where they first met. Both trapped in troubled marriages, they struggle with their yearnings to be together again.
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 | The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit by Sloan Wilson
Buy new: $10.76 / Used from: $1.76 Setting: Connecticut & New York City, 1955. Like Don Draper, Tom Rath is caught in the daily grind of commuting to New York City by train, coming home from work to TV-addicted kids, and being haunted by his wartime past. This book was also adapted into a film starring Gregory Peck.
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 | Executive Suite
Buy new: $17.99 / Used from: $7.98 Released in 1954, this movie (based on the 1952 novel by Cameron Hawley) shows the office politics and jockeying for position that happens during a troubled company's transfer of power. Shades of Sterling Cooper are all over this one.
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 | The King of Madison Avenue: David Ogilvy and the Making of Modern Advertising by Kenneth Roman
Buy new: $18.45 / Used from: $9.79 Nonfiction. Biography of one of the original "Mad Men" who witnessed the '60s ad boom firsthand, and lived to tell the tale.
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 | All American Ads of the 60's (Midi Series) (Spanish Edition) by Jim Heimann
Buy used from: $49.94 Nonfiction. Large collection of real print ads from the 1960s.
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