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Matt Zoller Seitz
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Mad Men Carousel: The Complete Critical Companion Hardcover – November 10, 2015

by Matt Zoller Seitz (Author), Max Dalton (Illustrator), Megan Abbott (Foreword)
4.7 4.7 out of 5 stars 473 ratings
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Mad Men Carousel is an episode-by-episode guide to all seven seasons of AMC's Mad Men. This book collects TV and movie critic Matt Zoller Seitz’s celebrated Mad Men recaps—as featured on New York magazine's Vulture blog—for the first time, including never-before-published essays on the show’s first three seasons. Seitz’s writing digs deep into the show’s themes, performances, and filmmaking, examining complex and sometimes confounding aspects of the series. The complete series—all seven seasons and ninety-two episodes—is covered.

Each episode review also includes brief explanations of locations, events, consumer products, and scientific advancements that are important to the characters, such as P.J. Clarke’s restaurant and the old Penn Station; the inventions of the birth control pill, the Xerox machine, and the Apollo Lunar Module; the release of the Beatles’ Revolver and the Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds; and all the wars, protests, assassinations, and murders that cast a bloody pall over a chaotic decade.
Mad Men Carousel is named after an iconic moment from the show’s first-season finale, “The Wheel,” wherein Don delivers an unforgettable pitch for a new slide projector that’s centered on the idea of nostalgia: “the pain from an old wound.” This book will soothe the most ardent Mad Men fan’s nostalgia for the show. New viewers, who will want to binge-watch their way through one of the most popular TV shows in recent memory, will discover a spoiler-friendly companion to one of the most multilayered and mercurial TV shows of all time.

It's the perfect gift for Mad Men fans and obsessives.

Also available from Matt Zoller Seitz: The Oliver Stone Experience, The Wes Anderson Collection: Bad Dads, The Wes Anderson Collection: The Grand Budapest Hotel, and The Wes Anderson Collection.
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Previous page
  1. Print length
    464 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    Abrams
  4. Publication date
    November 10, 2015
  5. Dimensions
    6.5 x 1.5 x 9.5 inches
  6. ISBN-10
    9781419720635
  7. ISBN-13
    978-1419720635
  8. See all details
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Book recommendations, author interviews, editors' picks, and more. Read it now.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Took me back to the days when you’d actually look forward to your favorite TV hour, the immersive pleasure bath of now what are they going to do?" (David Chase, creator of The Sopranos)

"Matt Zoller Seitz’s recaps are in service to Mad Men’s excellence and complexity. First-rate work." (David Milch, creator of Deadwood and writer-producer for NYPD Blue)

"In this gorgeous collection of recaps, Matt Zoller Seitz seeks the wisdom within Matthew Weiner’s visionary television show, examining it from every angle, shaking it like a snow globe. A treat for anyone who cares about television." (Emily Nussbaum, TV critic for The New Yorker)

"Pithy, witty, smart, and from the heart: That’s what we expect from a classic Don Draper pitch, and Matt Zoller Seitz captures all of these qualities in his must-read Mad Men recaps." (Maureen Ryan, TV critic for The Huffington Post)

"Matt Zoller Seitz writes about television more passionately and compellingly than any other critic writing today. With Mad Men, he’s found his Shangri-La. Mad Men Carousel is essential reading for fans like me, who eagerly awaited his trenchant and witty analyses almost as much as the groundbreaking show itself. Thought-provoking and wildly entertaining, this brilliant collection of essays makes me want to revisit all seven seasons of the greatest American television show ever produced." (Robert Falls, artistic director of Chicago’s Goodman Theatre)

"Matt Zoller Seitz's brilliantly elaborate dissection and exploration of this equally complex series makes this collection absolutely essential for Mad Men obsessives like myself." (Grammy Award-winning singer-songwriter Aimee Mann)

"I envy anyone who has never watched Mad Men and gets to experience it for the first time with the invaluably perceptive Matt Zoller Seitz close at hand. For the rest of us, this addictive and rewarding deep-dive into every episode is an irresistible reason to revisit a great series." (Mark Harris, author of Pictures at a Revolution: Five Movies and the Birth of New Hollywood and Five)

About the Author

Matt Zoller Seitz is the TV critic for New York Magazine, the editor-in-chief of RogerEbert.com, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in criticism, and the author of the New York Times bestsellers The Wes Anderson Collection (Abrams, 2013) and The Wes Anderson Collection: The Grand Budapest Hotel (Abrams, 2015), as well as the forthcoming The Oliver Stone Experience (Abrams, 2016). He is the founder and original editor of The House Next Door, now a part of Slant Magazine, and the publisher of Press Play, a blog of film and TV criticism and video essays.

A Brooklyn-based writer and filmmaker, Seitz has written, narrated, edited, or produced more than a hundred hours’ worth of video essays about cinema history and style for The Museum of the Moving Image and The L Magazine, among other outlets. His five-part 2009 video essay, “Wes Anderson: The Substance of Style,” was later spun off into The Wes Anderson Collection, and his 2008 video essay series “Oliver Stone: The Official History” is the partial basis for The Oliver Stone Experience.

Megan Abbott is the Edgar®-winning author of the novels Queenpin, The Song Is You, Die a Little, Bury Me Deep, The End of Everything, Dare Me, and her latest, The Fever, which was chosen as one of the Best Books of the Summer by the New York Times, People magazine, and Entertainment Weekly, and one of the Best Books of the Year by Amazon, National Public Radio, the Boston Globe, and the Los Angeles Times.

Her writing has appeared in the New York Times, Salon, the Guardian, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times Magazine, the Believer, and the Los Angeles Review of Books. Abbott is also the author of a nonfiction book, The Street Was Mine: White Masculinity in Hardboiled Fiction and Film Noir, and the editor of A Hell of a Woman, an anthology of female crime fiction. She has been nominated for many awards, including three Edgar® Awards, the Hammett Prize, the Shirley Jackson Prize, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and the Folio Prize. She lives in New York City.

Max Dalton is a graphic artist living in Buenos Aires, Argentina by way of Barcelona, New York, and Paris. He has published a few books and illustrated some others, including The Wes Anderson Collection (Abrams, 2012) and The Wes Anderson Collection: The Grand Budapest Hotel (Abrams 2014). Max started painting in 1977 and since 2008, he has been creating posters about music, movies, and pop culture.

Product details

  • ASIN ‏ : ‎ 1419720635
  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Abrams; Illustrated edition (November 10, 2015)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 464 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 9781419720635
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1419720635
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.9 pounds
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.5 x 1.5 x 9.5 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.7 4.7 out of 5 stars 473 ratings

About the author

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Matt Zoller Seitz

Matt Zoller Seitz

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Matt Zoller Seitz is an American film and television critic, author, and filmmaker based in New York City.

Bio from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Customer reviews

4.7 out of 5 stars
4.7 out of 5
473 global ratings
As a rabid fan of MAD MEN I could not ...
5 Stars
As a rabid fan of MAD MEN I could not ...
As a rabid fan of MAD MEN I could not wait to get this book, however I was beside myself when I opened it and saw that it had the teeny tinyest print I had EVER SEEN in ANY book. I even went so far as to show it to a friend of mine because I thought it was just my eyes that had issues with the print's size, but my friend (14 years younger than moi) agreed. So, I ended up ordering a copy from iTunes which is easier to read on my iPad, but I have yet to read the book, I have just skimmed, so far.
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Top reviews from the United States

Amazon Customer
5.0 out of 5 stars ... read a lot of recaps and reviews of my favorite tv shows
Reviewed in the United States on January 22, 2016
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Not just a 'Remember When' collection of articles. I read a lot of recaps and reviews of my favorite tv shows. I do this for 2 reasons: 1. To relive the episode I have just seen and 2. To get another (professional?) opinion of what I just saw. Did I miss something the writers intended? A sly cultural reference perhaps? Most critics give you the former, the 'remember when' review. To paraphrase Tony Soprano, 'remember when' is the lowest form of criticism. The really good ones (like Mr. Seitz & Alan Sepinwall) give you the latter. In Mad Men Carousel Mr. Seitz gives you the latter in spades. Broken down into chapters that mirror the seasons, each chapter features a self contained discussion of each episode. The book is full of natural stopping points that make it easy to pick up/put down in a busy life, though putting it down will prove difficult. There are also copious amounts of footnotes that expound on what you are reading (the most recurring being 'The Wheel' S1E13). Other of my favorite footnotes are regarding character actors and what else they have been in. It is like when we see someone we recognize in a show and immediately our inner moviepoopshoot.com* kicks in. "Oh yeah, she was in an episode of Malcolm in the Middle."

Reading this book was a great way to relive the experience of seeing the show for the first time because you were learning things about characters, development, story, and production for the first time. The book is part novelization, part analysis, and part film school textbook. The creators as well as the characters of the show are characters in the book. When I first heard of this book I had a very small idea of what it would probably be, and I was ok with that. What I got instead was a book I didn't want to put down because it allowed me to occupy space and time with these characters I care so very much about. It allowed me to get to know them better than even two viewings of the complete series had done. Unfortunately, it also meant that when I finished the book I would feel that subtle sadness and emptiness in knowing I would not be sharing any more time with them.

*IMDB as seen through the eyes of Kevin Smith, writer/director/star of Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back
10 people found this helpful
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George Patterson
5.0 out of 5 stars ESSENTIAL READING FOR MAD MEN FANS!
Reviewed in the United States on July 5, 2023
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If you are like me, you realized that by casually binging Mad Men, you miss a lot of what the show’s creators crafted, an amazingly multifaceted world all it’s own. Mad Men Carousel lays bare all that the show hides below its surface, and after following the series through the book, I have found endless entertainment. As a companion to one of the best shows in television history, this book is comparatively the best in its genre. It has over 400 pages that consider the historical context, psychology, and storytelling of Mad Men. The book is structured around a detailed analysis of each episode, but it also includes a foreword, a preface, a timeline, footnotes, endnotes, and much more. I can’t wait to go through each episode again with the Mad Men Carousel as a guide.
One person found this helpful
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Brian P
5.0 out of 5 stars Mad Men Beyond
Reviewed in the United States on November 21, 2023
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An astute, insightful, intelligent and humorous analysis of a great tv show about the human condition. If ever there was a book that cements Mad Men’s reputation as a show that will forever be praised, debated, and discussed, it’s this book about carousels.
One person found this helpful
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Richard Sebastian
4.0 out of 5 stars Focus on Characters and Storyline
Reviewed in the United States on December 8, 2018
Verified Purchase
Every episode is detailed. The arch of each character is explained. There are no loose ends.
Tons of footnotes and historical references. You always have a time/date reference.
Many of the episode summaries jump around so it is best that you just watched the episode before reading. Most were written as the show originally aired on AMC. This book is a good companion to the DVD set or Netflix.
The actors, writers and production of the show are not written about. This is about the story. How the show came to be and any inside story is not dealt with here. No pictures.
Overall, if you have invested the time to see all the episodes, maybe twice, and what to go deeper into the minds of the characters, this the book for you.
2 people found this helpful
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SCM
5.0 out of 5 stars For fans, committed and casual, it's worth your money.
Reviewed in the United States on February 28, 2018
Verified Purchase
I'm in the process of re-watching the series for the third time, and I wanted to dive into deeper analysis of one of my favorite shows. I've seen the amped-up soap opera reviews that seek to show admiration but never respect for what it's done for the form.

Seitz's compiled reviews shine a light onto the novelization of the medium in general, where a showrunner like Weiner can explore themes and tie them together across episodes and seasons into a more profound accumulation of statements on the life and times of domestic and work life in the 1960s. The critical companion is a meticulous dive into a meticulously, obsessively crafted show that reveals complicated and conflicted characters (my grandparents' and parents' generation) as they are: unvarnished, imperfect, altogether human.

I found it invaluable since I knew the broad strokes of 1960s history and references but not specific people that Roger and others tended to mention in their jokes or monologues. It holds the series to task when episodes and story arcs don't work, so you'll get the sense of it as a truly cultural document that seeks to illuminate one of the most enigmatic stories of TV's Golden Age.

For fans, committed and casual, it's worth your money.
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Erma P. Sanders
5.0 out of 5 stars A must have for the Mad Men lover
Reviewed in the United States on October 18, 2021
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This is an awesome companion for all fans of the series. I devoured almost as quickly as I rewatched the series. It answers the questions you have in your head and makes you think about other aspects of the show in a new way. And it makes you remember all the things you loved about the characters and storylines,
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Top reviews from other countries

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Gabriel Cavalcante
3.0 out of 5 stars Péssimo serviço de entrega.
Reviewed in Brazil on March 27, 2023
Verified Purchase
Recebi o livro sem plástico de proteção e todas as pontas amassadas. Dei 3 estrelas porque o livro é fenomenal, porém o serviço de entregas da Amazon maculou a experiência.
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Gabriel Cavalcante
3.0 out of 5 stars Péssimo serviço de entrega.
Reviewed in Brazil on March 27, 2023
Recebi o livro sem plástico de proteção e todas as pontas amassadas. Dei 3 estrelas porque o livro é fenomenal, porém o serviço de entregas da Amazon maculou a experiência.
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World Leader Pretend
5.0 out of 5 stars Para frikis y completistas de Mad men como tú
Reviewed in Spain on March 22, 2023
Verified Purchase
Una preciosidad es lo que es este libro... Cada episodio, comentado por un tío que supuestamente sabe del tema... y sí sabe... Si conoces a un entusiasta de Mad men y estás harto de regalarle un jamón... este año, con este libro lo tendrás más contento..

Espero que haya sido útil mi valoración
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World Leader Pretend
5.0 out of 5 stars Para frikis y completistas de Mad men como tú
Reviewed in Spain on March 22, 2023
Una preciosidad es lo que es este libro... Cada episodio, comentado por un tío que supuestamente sabe del tema... y sí sabe... Si conoces a un entusiasta de Mad men y estás harto de regalarle un jamón... este año, con este libro lo tendrás más contento..

Espero que haya sido útil mi valoración
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2 people found this helpful
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Andrea Orozco
3.0 out of 5 stars Great book but arrived in terrible shape
Reviewed in Mexico on January 9, 2020
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I bought this as a gift for a friend who loves the show and was so excited when it arrived. The contents are great and it's a great option for any fan of MadMen however it's very disapointing that the book arrived with considerable damage in the covers and spine, stained pages and a huge red dot in the text block. It was too late to return it and order something else so I had to explain the whole thing to my friend (who was kind enough to understand the problem and kept the book anyway).
One person found this helpful
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C B
5.0 out of 5 stars Ok
Reviewed in Italy on December 7, 2020
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Libro arrivato in condizioni perfette
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Dupont Betty
5.0 out of 5 stars Very interesting complementary book
Reviewed in France on June 2, 2020
Verified Purchase
Very interesting book and clear analysis of the series.
The relationships, filming etc. are well described. Except it doesn't talk much about pollution (the Gold Violin, Betty throws the trash away without hesitation - littering was very common). The number of cigarettes being smoked are not really mentioned, also the fact of taking the aperitif at 10am. At this level, Seitz did not insist although it is very interesting to analyze it.
The relationship between Peggy and Pete in the first season.. They slept together and Pete doesn't quite accept the fact that she doesn't chase after him.. She chases after her career, not after boys. And Pete always says "You know.. I am married now", yes she knows and she doesn't really care. But Pete wants her to chase after him and needs her attention..
Furthermore, S2E5, the fact that Peggy realizes her power and realizes that she has to treat Don as an "equal" in order to get into the business. In the end, she says "Thank you, Don" and not Mr. Draper, which is a immense sign that she is on first-name terms with him and sees him as a colleague from now on. I think Seitz should have insisted on that.
Mistake : p. 319, footnote 4 is (S2E13) and not (S5E13).
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