Mad Men takes place in the early 60s. I think D. Halberstam started writing for the N.Y. Times later in the 60s. He definitely had not yet written "The Fifties", so if there was some mention of that book, I would be very surprised as the Mad Men writers are very good at staying within their time period. Unless a reference was made to something he wrote on the civil rights movement, I can't think of when his name might have come up.

I don't know exactly when Halberstam started with the Times but was one of the early reporter/critics of the Vietnam war and actually won his Pulitzer in about '64. Also The Times had recruited him from The Nashville Tennessean where he was covering the civil rights movement, which he also covered for The Times (The Tennessean in those days was regarded as one of the commie liberal southern papers like my alma mater, The Constitution). And he was one of that fantastic stable of writers that Willie Morris recruited at Harper's Magazine in the '60s, so I think it is entirely possible that there was a MM reference about something that he might have been writing for somebody -- but I didn't catch it, either.

This is totally off topic, but since you folks have an interest in writers, are any of you John Cheever fans? I'm struck by the similarities between Don Draper and Cheever, both the men and the subjects that Cheever wrote about. Maybe Weiner is a Cheever fan. I can go on at length, but I don't want to bore anyone.

Yes, I love John Cheever's writing. "Goodbye My Brother" is a favorite. When Don and Betty went to visit her sick father there was a distinct flavor of one of John Cheever's stories - at least to me.

David Halberstam came up a few times in a couple of forum discussions when the topic was about book-era or era-related books for the fifties and sixties. Loved his book, The Fifties, but don't think he was ever mentioned in MM.

His earlier book on diplomacy in the 50s and 60s, The Best and the Brightest, was pretty good, too,

This is a show taking place in the early 60's...
If you ask my opinion on a summary of this show well, than here it is.
It is basicly about a bunch of smoking losers that do crazy things and have deceatful and lying lives.
Thats what I describe it as...

This is a show taking place in the early 60's...
But if you want my opinion of a summary...here it is. This is a show about low-life smokers that of lying and deceatful lives, but, like I said...thats just my opinion...

Lying? Deceit? In an ad agency? I'm SHOCKED!

amcdude56, I suppose you don't HAVE to know how to spell or use punctuation to offer an opinion, but these things certainly help if you expect to be taken seriously. Knowing how to construct a sentence that makes sense would also be "a good thing".

By the way, why choose to post your opinion on a thread discussing David Halberstam?

Right, Z, everyone knows deceatful has two L's in it. ;-)