Three books to read if you too are rewatching Mad Men.

This week, the internet got a fun little treat when Mad Men, a pinnacle of early prestige TV, landed on HBOMax after a long absence from streaming services.

Unfortunately, the new, much-hyped 4K restoration hit our home screens with flaws. Early viewers noted weirdly framed shots, and the presence of crew members in the infamous oyster vomit scene.

All the hullabaloo has got the critics talking, and sparked an occasion for mass rewatch. Rachel Syme, of The New Yorker, is even launching a Substack to chronicle her return to Sterling Cooper.

I’m not immune to the invitation to time travel. Especially given that most of Mad Men‘s appeal is nostalgia. Matthew Weiner’s incredible art department perfectly captured the ennui of the 60s. (And managed to burnish most of the era’s flaws.)

Here are three books to pick up if you too are yearning for that three martini lunch.

Richard Yates, Eleven Kinds of Loneliness

I’m so ready for the Yates-issance. The sad-eyed chronicler of anxious suburbanites and thwarted writers really captured the Faustian bargain attending (some) people’s 50s. His scene, like Weiner’s, is the Manhattan skyscraper. His subjects, the worker bees inside. Yates writes about people whose material comfort came with a side of spiritual despair.

If you love the long shots of disaffected Pete Campbell, or Kenneth Cosgrove’s arc away from creative to advertorial work, I promise you’ll dig this poignant collection.

Diane di Prima, Recollections of My Life As a Woman

It’s neat when Don dares to venture below 14th Street. His downtown girlfriend Midge is a fixture of the first season, representing all the bohemian finger-waggers who scorn The Man. Diane Di Prima was a true bohemian, and an icon of 50s New York.

The beatnik poet lived an extraordinary New York life, pivoting between writing and activism. Her memoir is a document of a bygone scene, and a swell corrective to the “demi-monde” as done by Mad Men.

Rona Jaffe, The Best of Everything

It’s the office ladies who really keep Sterling Cooper afloat. This novel following three women getting into the Manhattan steno pool has the career girl front and center. Now with a new preface for its 65th anniversary, Jaffe’s classic shows how women in the workplace navigated the era’s social and political ladders.

According to Syme, there are several Peggys in these pages. And a Joan. And a Megan. And a Faye.

If you need more novels to wet your whistle, the NYPL assembled this excellent close reading list of books that evoke or feature in Mad Men. And there’s always Cheever.