Don's bedtime research: The Best of Everything
Don Draper (Jon Hamm) · The Drapers' bedroom
Same episode, second book. Don reads Rona Jaffe in bed next to Betty, and the Chicago Public Library has him doing it as research into what women want. Later the two of them talk about the movie. A man studying women from a paperback while one is lying next to him is most of season one in a single frame.
Paused Tuesdays
One still, one stack, every Tuesday morning.
The book
The Best of Everything
Jaffe's 1958 novel follows young women working at a New York publishing house, which makes it the Sterling Cooper secretarial floor with better book deals. The 1959 film cast Joan Crawford as a senior editor. Betty watches it in the same episode and is not kind about how Crawford has aged.
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Sleuthed by @shelfsleuth · 2026-10-22
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Paused Tuesdays
One still, one stack, every Tuesday morning.
Also in Mad Men
All 26 books
Joan returns the office copy: Lady Chatterley's LoverS1 E3
Don's Israel homework: ExodusS1 E6
Bert's recommendation: Atlas ShruggedS1 E8
Don's bar find: Meditations in an EmergencyS2 E1
Peggy's mother and the library copy: The Agony and the EcstasyS2 E2
Betty and the Fitzgerald stories: Babylon Revisited and Other StoriesS2 E4
Joy's morning after: The Sound and the FuryS2 E11
Sally reads to Grandpa Gene: The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman EmpireS3 E3
Lane at the hospital: The Adventures of Tom SawyerS3 E6
Roger on Ogilvy: Confessions of an Advertising ManS3 E7
Betty in the bath: The GroupS3 E10
Sally's Newbery winner: The Twenty-One BalloonsS4 E5