I'm wondering the same thing. I'm dying to know who he sent it to as well.

Bert Cooper, perhaps? He was strangely absent from this episode. Meditations and Bert seem to go hand in hand, don't you think? Could some or all of the unrest at Sterling Cooper be because of his absence? Don could also be sending it to Rachael Menkin. They both know what it feels like to be outsiders. Thoughts?

When he mailed the book, my first thought was Rachael. It seems it will be someone he is/was very close with, as he signed it only as "D". Or possibly this is to introduce a new character?

I hadn't known this book, but found a nice preview of it at http://books.google.com/

P.S. The book is actually "Meditations in an Emergency" by Frank O'Hara. I might check it out at the library or see if I can find it online. According to Amazon, it's only 52 pages (it's poetry, not a novel). Certainly would take less time than Ayn Rand's "Atlas Shrugged."

"Meditations on an Emergency" was written by Frank O'Hara, a New York based poet.

O'Hara was about the same age as Draper in 1962.

I believe the poem quoted at the end of show was "Mayakovsky". Not sure.

While I'm thinking about it, I don't think Don would sign "D" to his name if he was writing to Bert. "D" seems more secretive--it could be interpreted as being a man or woman. If Don was sending the book to Rachael, perhaps she is married now, hence the secretive "D". A lot of people on the message boards speculated that Don might have conceived a child with Rachael in Season 1. Perhaps she wouldn't give the baby up, and decided, in an unfortunate dilemma, to marry a Jewish man her father would approve. That would be pretty sad--Rachael seems to be the only person on the show who believes in real love. Thoughts, anyone?

I think he went out and bought the book himself after he saw guy reading it in bar. I put another post regarding it somewhere on this site

Speaking of Jewish, what's the deal about the man Joan is with? Why did Roger call him Jewish? W/hen Joan said he isn't, Roger said, "Trust me, he used to be." What does that mean?>

egk719 - interesting theory on Rachel. I firmly believe she was pregnant with Don's child which is why she left. But I think the book went to Midge.

Oh, Rachel can go away and never come back to MM and I would be thrilled!! How can someone so bitter, nasty and have #enis envy be in love? She thinks the same way Don does, "love was invented so men would buy nylons for women". I have always despised little rich, bratty snobs like Rachel. She only has a job because Daddy owns the store. The reason Meken's sales were down for so many years is because Rachel's running the store. Ever been in stores that people shop because they are expensive. The clientel are so nasty that they even hate themselves. She throws her status around the store and it an absolute witch to every employee. They all hate her and she thinks it is because she is the boss...no Rachel, they would hate you even if you were not the boss!! She pretty much spit in Don's face when Don wanted to run off with her. She yelled at him and called him a coward. That's love? Jerry Springer love, maybe.

Oh, please. Rachel's mystique is incredible. She is an intellectual and has no desire to be anything but a woman; she also happens to reflect, I think, the Ayn Rand model for a woman, which is what turns Don on, even though he doesn't know it. He goes for the independent, gutsy woman--which is why he likes Peggy (and, interestingly, why Pete likes her, too, but he doesn't get it even more than Don doesn't), and why he likes Midge as well. On the other hand, Betsy, like her friend Francine, and like "Tweety," Pete's wife, only has "feminine wiles" at her disposal; perfume, sexy clothes, and a Grace Kelly-like primness that may mask creativity in bed; but what Betsy wants is a two-car garage and to be able to look helpless when her car breaks down. The reason she's having psychological problems is because part of her knows that "what she wants" is bought at a price that is too high: it is at the cost of her own personality.

I have never seen Rachel be a witch to any Menken's employee. If she were the kind of person luvmadmen describes, she would have fired the sleeping furniture lady on the spot, to show Don what a tough customer she is. Give me a spoon, I want two scoops of Rachel.

Having said that, I've seen the women that luvmadmen talks about, hanging around and being mean to sales gals at Ann Taylor, Saks, and Nordstrom's. They don't have anything else to do all day. Rachel wants their trade, because she can handle the bitches.

But Rachel, like the feminine characters of Ayn Rand novels (Dagny Taggart of "Atlas Shrugged," for example, and more cinematically recognizable, Dominique Francon, played by Patricia Neal opposite Gary Cooper in "The Fountainhead", doesn't have penis envy. She wants to be possessed by a man tougher than she is. Both Midge and Rachel have discovered a soft place in Don that they don't like.

And yes, my guess is that Rachel is having an abortion.

As for the other question, about Joan's boyfriend who "used to be Jewish," in the middle of the twentieth century it was not unusual for Jews to become Christianized; they usually became Episcopalians. There are any number of stories about immigrants who threw their tefillen into the Atlantic as the boat approached Ellis Island, or the "Jew named Sean Ferguson" who had his name changed by an Irish immigration official because he didn't speak English, and had forgotten the name he was supposed to give, and so said "schoen vergessen" (I forget, already!) when asked.

Some people, for example, suggest that Harvey Firestone (Firestone Tire and Rubber) changed his last name from "Feierstein" to mask his Jewish past. Whether or not that is true will probably remain a mystery. What is true, and what should shut down your investigation of such things, is that a guy named Rosenberg was the father of Nazi racial theories, and appeared at the famous Nuremberg Party Day documented by Leni Riefensthal.

Having said that, I know that I dated a girl named Sandra Cuperman, an Episcopalian, who openly acknowledged her Jewish roots.

I don't recall Rachel being a witch to any employee at Menkin's. In fact, there is a scene where she and Don walk in on a saleswoman sleeping in the furniture section, and Rachel barely reacts and doesn't make any effort to wake her. I can name a few of my bosses who were far "witcher."
P.S. Great post, Paisley.

At this point I vote for Rachel getting the book. She has moved on, perhaps to a marriage, so he is tentative and signs only "D" and probably sends it to the store, not a home address. He was more emotionally intimate with her, revealed his secrets, his fears. He was not at all emotional with Midge.

As for Rachel's demeanor, I must respectfully disagree with luvadmen - Rachel did not come across as a ball buster or bitch, though she is serious about business; in personal matters, though, she shows a lack of judgment and self-preservation by bedding a married man, if in fact her goal is marriage. Maybe she really doesn't want marriage, though society (including Jewish society of the day) would demand that she at least say she wants it, to be "respectable". Miserable rich society bitches and wannabes buying luxury goods on credit do like to abuse sales help - then and now -but I never saw a hint of that with Rachel. To me, these horrible rich women are just about the most useless, deplorable creatures on earth.

As for Roger saying of Joan's doctor boyfriend, "he used to be Jewish"... I know of several jews who changed their names to WASP surnames and had the kind of looks and coloring (maybe after a little plastic surgery) which allowed them to "pass" as gentiles. These were people who would have been in Don's age group circa 1960. One was a real estate broker, stepfather of one of my friends, who went to a "christian science" church with his (real) gentile wife; and the other was a former model who claimed to be "episcopalian" (a much-married mother of another friend, who preferred gentile men). My one friend hated her stepfather and liked to defame him - she eventually let it slip that he'd changed his name years ago and was really jewish. As for the "episcopalian", I surmised the truth when her real brother came to town, sporting their original family name, unaltered facial features, and bringing with him a consignment of his drawings of famous bearded orthodox rabbis holding torahs, which he insisted she hang in her house -something you would NEVER see in the home of a gentile, especially an episcopalian.

Most every surname ending in ...stone is originally german-jewish. English surnames are not constructed that way. Modern Example: Sumner Redstone is a jew who changed his name from Rottenstein, Rothstein or Rubenstein (all variations meaning 'red stone'). The medieval times, jews settling in germany were forced to take surnames so they could be easily identified...some have ridiculous, fanciful meanings or were related to the jewelry trade, in which they engaged. Blaustein, Goldstein, Silberstein, Rubenstein, Rottenstein, Rothstein, to name a few. Others took the name of the city or region where they settled (Berliner, Wiener, Frankfurter).

Nice article about the book can be found here: http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/theampersand/archive/2008/07/28/mad-men-a-well-read-ad-man.aspx

I think Rachael was the recipient. The voice-over at the end was very haunting, sad, and wistful to match both Don's longing for her, and for who he was. That was the one scene of the whole episode that really resonated for me. I really felt like crying for him.

Paisley, I think you've estimated Rachael exactly right, and love the comparison to Ayn Rand women/heroines.

If you haven't see the discussion on Ayn Rand from another talk, check it out. There seemed to be a consensus, like Bert, that Don embodied the qualities of an Ayn Rand hero (my choice Howard Roark - The Fountainhead).

I loved the character of Rachael. I thought she was smart, savvy, sophisticated, warm and loving, and altogether more well-rounded that Don (she had her emotional life straight - Don didn't), hence her rejection of him.

But Don's becoming "tethered" now to position and standing, habit, obligation, whatnot, and it's killing his soul.

Does anyone know what the music was when Betty came down the stairs in the mink? It was playing at the end as well. It sounds familiar.

PeggySue, I have an idea that you're right about Roger denigrating Joan's boyfriend. Maybe out of petty jealousy or wistfulness. He acted like he was still virile and in the game to play with Joan; it's possible he's completely recovered with no lasting ill effects from his heart attack. Joan simply walked away (as I thought she would because she's 30 in this Season - time to get down to business and find a husband).

Oops, Joan is 32 in this season (from an online interview discussing the characters in 1962).

Peggy Sue, why don't you tell us all about what "shopping was really like" and who did or didn't get a credit account? I may have been a child but I remember my mother being attentively waited on by one or more sales assistants, who knew their merchandise and their departments, and usually provided great service. I remember she would give my father's name and the purchases would be billed. Sometimes items she selected would be delivered to the house. She had accounts at all the major stores. We lived in Chicago so I can't imagine it was that much different from NYC. We would often have lunch in the department store restaurants, which were very good. Shopping was great fun.
FYI, while in Germany some gentiles had surnames similar to those of jews, MOST of them did not. The whole point hundreds of years ago in Germany and Europe was to keep the jews socially and culturally distinct and set apart from the mainstream, which was a form of oppression and discrimination. How do you think the Nazis were so easily able to identify them? Their (mostly) distinctive surnames! That's also how they identified US jewish servicement when they captured prisoners of war. And "surname" is one word, not two.