Mad Men Unbuttoned: A Romp Through 1960s America by Natasha Vargas-Cooper

Abstract

Men Unbuttoned: A Romp Through 1960s America Natasha Vargas-Cooper. New York: Collins Design, 2010. Men is paperback adaptation of Natasha Vargas-Cooper's popular blog, Footnotes of Men, which has since been renamed Mad Men Unbuttoned after this just published volume. As was the case with the blog, this book is inspired by the celebrated AMC series, Men (2007-present). Supported by small group of Web collaborators (primarily comprised of Angela Serrature who is credited as an historian, Megan Lubaszka as an architect, and Natasha Simons as writer) Vargas-Cooper authors sixty-three of the seventy-three mini-essays across nine broadlyconceived chapters that refer in one way or another to an incident,? character, setting, or prop from the program (such as the Kennedy assassination, Conrad Hilton, Greenwich Village, or the ubiquitous cigarette, among many other examples). The ten other entries are composed by eight additional guest contributors including the aforementioned Lubaszka and Simons along with personal remembrance of Ann-Margret by Carol Diehl that is worth noting. general, Men is blog-like in its organization in that all of the chapters are interconnected thematically, but none are more important than any of the others, and together they really don't build toward conclusion or deeper understanding of the series or the era in any substantive way. For instance, chapter 1, Ads and the Men Who Made Them, is the largest section of the book containing seventeen mini-essays that introduce some of the leading advertising figures of the 1950s and early 1960s (such as Leo Burnett, David Ogilvy, and George Lois) as well as number of iconic products from the times (such as American Airlines, Polaroid, and Maidenform undergarments). Following suit in short order are Chapter 2, Style (seven entries); Chapter 3, Working Girls (six); Chapter 4, Sex (ten); Chapter 5, Smoking, Drinking, Drugging (four); Chapter 6, D?cor (six); Chapter 7, Literature (six); Chapter 8, Movies (seven); and Chapter 9, In Progress (ten). Viewers of the show will recognize all of the individual subjects that are covered and how each has played some role in the Men narrative at various times during the first three seasons, but the seventy-three agenda items are neither exhaustive nor cumulative in providing more complete picture of the program or the time-frame in which it is set. Nevertheless, Vargas-Cooper's observations can sometimes be insightful if also somewhat debatable. For example, she employs Leo Burnett to contend that Don Draper is a disciple of his Chicago School of advertising: homespun, straightforward, familiar; and to assert that Burnett's creative department head, Draper Daniels, was the model for Don Draper. …