Book pick: 'Mad Women' by Jane Maas

Mad Women
Book cover courtesy of publisher

Kerri Miller's book pick this week is "Mad Women" by Jane Maas. The memoir chronicles her experiences as a copywriter in the '60s at the agencies that inspired AMC's "Mad Men."

Maas said in the Huffington Post that the sexism in the hit television show reflects the world she remembers:

I think that we women were extremely passive. A woman copywriter who worked next to me went to our boss, the creative director, and complained that the guy who was sitting in the next office was making twice what we were making. She said, "I think I'm churning out more and better copywriting than he is." And the boss said, "But he's a man. He has a wife and kids to support." And she said, "Oh. I didn't think of it that way." And she didn't bring it up again. I think we accepted this as the status quo. We accepted working in this sort of ghetto.

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