We'd like to thank all of the Mad Men fans that submitted entries to our "Mad Men DVD Giveaway & Culture Quiz" for which we asked you to pick out a book, movie, or TV show mentioned in Season One then discuss how it relates to a scene, the characters, or the show's larger themes.  We were delighted with the insight present in all the submissions—you made it tough to pick out just three winners.

That said, congratulations are due to the victors: Deborah, Charliefoxtrot, and Eric Cooley.  We'll be getting in touch with you via e-mail to confirm where you'd like your Season 1 DVDs shipped. 

We hope you'll all be enjoying the encore airings of Mad Men beginning Sunday nights at midnight following our new series Breaking Bad on January 20th.

Check out Deborah,  Charlie and Eric's winnning entries after the jump.

omDeborah's Winning Entry:

The "girls" of Sterling and Ross are reading Lady Chatterly’s Lover, a book about marital infidelity, in "The Marriage of Figaro," an episode overflowing with infidelity. This is an obvious one, sure, lust lust lust is in the air, and it's easy to connect the dots. But lust is an underlying theme of Mad Men, and this particular book foreshadows the events of Indian Summer. What’s important about Lady Chatterly's Lover is that it's about a woman who is sexually frustrated. Easy enough to point to Don cheating or Pete cheating, but the frustrated longings of women are particularly poignant here, and the presence of this particular book underlines them.

Eric Cooley's Winning Entry:

Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. The more I read the book the more I connect the dots as it being a major springboard for the character development in the series; Cooper is drawn to the book for it's "Rational Self-Interest" and how it applies to the (1960) business model, he fancies Don Draper as a archetype of one the central characters in the novel. Evident in the scene where Drapers (alleged) identity switcharoo is greeted with apathy by Cooper who is more concerned with the final product than any ambiguous past Draper may be hiding -- reinvention of the self reigns supreme. My simple corollary -- A major Railroad Line and Metal Fabricator are to Atlas Shrugged what Advertising and Sterling-Cooper's clients are to Mad Men.

Charliefoxtrot's Winning Entry:

In Episode 10 (“The Long Weekend”), Joan and Sterling discuss the The Apartment, a 1960 film directed by Billy Wilder about infidelity and corporate America that can be seen as a thematic inspiration for Mad Men. Joan self-consciously identifies with Shirley MacLaine's character, a young woman who is involved in a self-destructive affair with an insurance executive, a situation that neatly parallels her own. This allusion is driven home for the audience when, recalling MacLaine's elevator operator character, Joan presses the elevator button for Cooper after finishing their work.

Other echoes abound -– like Jack Lemmon's Baxter character, Pete Campbell and others are not above sacrificing personal integrity to get ahead. And like the philandering executive of the film, Sterling and the others' infidelities are attempts to mask a deep-seated unhappiness regardless of the power and privileges they possess. And Don Draper, the enigmatic and multifaceted protagonist, contains all those elements.