Mad Men (Reading Contemporary Television)

Since premiering in July 2007, Mad Men has won many awards and been syndicated across the globe. Its imprint is evident throughout contemporary culture—from TV advertisements and magazine covers to designer fashions and online debate. Its creator, Matthew Weiner, a former executive producer on The Sopranos, has again created compelling, complex characters, this time in the sophisticated, go-go world of Madison Avenue of the 1960s, with smoking, drinking, and the playing out of prejudices and anxieties of an era long neglected in popular culture. As Edgerton and a host of other well-known contributors demonstrate here, Mad Men is a zeitgeist show of the early twenty-first century.