Maas offers a wickedly funny, inside look at what it was really like to be an ad woman on Madison Avenue in the 1960s and 1970s, from casual sex to professional serfdom, in this immensely entertaining and bittersweet memoir.

“Hilarious Honest, intimate, this book tells it as it was.” -Mary Wells Lawrence, author of “A Big Life” (“In Advertising”) and founding president of Wells Rich Greene

“A real-life Peggy Olson, right out of Mad Men.” -Shelly Lazarus, Chairman, Ogilvy & Mather

“Breezy and salty.” -“The New York Times”

"Breezy and engaging though] ...The chief value of “Mad Women” is the witness it bears for younger women about the snobbery and sexism their mothers and grandmothers endured as the price of entry into mid-century American professional life.“ -”The Boston Globe“

What was it like to be an advertising woman on Madison Avenue in the 60s and 70s - that ”Mad Men" era of casual sex and professional serfdom? A real-life Peggy Olson reveals it all in this immensely entertaining and bittersweet memoir.

“Mad Women” is a tell-all account of life in the New York advertising world by Jane Maas, a copywriter who succeeded in the primarily male jungle depicted in the hit show Mad Men.

Fans of the show are dying to know how accurate it is: was there really that much sex at the office? Were there really three-martini lunches? Were women really second-class citizens? Jane Maas says the answer to all three questions is unequivocally “yes.” Her book, based on her own experiences and countless interviews with her peers, gives the full stories, from the junior account man whose wife almost left him when she found the copy of Screw magazine he'd used to find “a date” for a client, to the Ogilvy & Mather's annual Boat Ride, a sex-and-booze filled orgy, from which it was said no virgin ever returned intact. Wickedly funny and full of juicy inside information, “Mad Women” also tackles some of the tougher issues of the era, such as unequal pay, rampant, jaw-dropping sexism, and the difficult choice many women faced between motherhood and their careers.

Review
¿This book of Jane¿s is hilarious but so real that anyone infatuated with Mad Men and anyone interested in a future in advertising must buy it and learn a lot while laughing. There have been many books on advertising. . . . But I have never read one that paints as honest and intimate and lively a picture of life in an agency at this important time in advertising history. . . .You can see I liked it a lot.¿ — Mary Wells Lawrence, author of A Big Life (In Advertising) and founding president of Wells Rich Greene¿I think of Jane Maas as a real-life Peggy Olsen. When I started at Ogilvy & Mather in 1971, a lowly Account Executive, she was already a creative director. She took me under her wing and taught me a lot about creative work that sells. Mad Women made me laugh. It also made me nostalgic for those legendary days when David Ogilvy roamed the corridors exhorting us all to come up with BIG IDEAS. And the book made me think again about working women. Jane reminds us that the challenge of being a good wife, a nurturing mother and a successful professional, all at the same time, still remains. In this respect, we are all Mad Women.¿ ¿ Shelly Lazarus, chairman of Ogilvy & Mather Worldwide

Kenneth Roman, former Chairman and Chief Executive of Ogilvy & Mather Worldwide, one of the top international advertising and communications firms, is also the co-author of “Writing That Works.”
Jane Maas, a Creative Director at Ogilvy & Mather and subsequently Chairman of the Earle Palmer Brown agency, is a strategic and creative consultant and conducts sessions for the Association of National Advertisers on how to get more effective advertising. She is the author of “Adventures of an Advertising Woman.”
Martin Nisenholtz is CEO of “New York Times” Digital and a former director of con