Why are people so obsessed with the show?

Well, it’s high art but totally accessible. Top notch writing, complex characters, high stakes historical moment. It’s like a visual novel or a really sexy play. But it’s on TV so it’s relaxing to consume! Also, I think the narrative is engrossing because, you know, we’re so anxious right now! There are these slow rolling cultural shifts that are happening right beneath our feet. Similarly to rumbling Don and the feet of his cohorts.

Tell me about the book.

There all these historical elements floating around in each episode, adding to the overall mood and motif of the show. I want to grab them all and put them in one place, not just because I love the show but because I’m also fascinated by midcentury society, its social mores, politics, design, etc. So the book will use Mad Men as vehicle to explore and catalogue that time in our history. It will be handsome both in look and verse with tons of new stuff.

Most of the actors in Mad Men came from left field. Do you think the show would be the same if Don was played by a marquee name?

Ooo going with lesser known actors was a great move. I feel strangely uprooted when I see them out of their suits. They are also such fine actors that I never feel like they are acting!

What would Betty Friedan say about Betty Draper?

I’m sure she would shake Betts by the shoulders and scream, “is this all?!?” But I think Betty really just needs a friend more than a pamphlet. Oh, Betty! She’s the most complex character of the show, I veer between thinking of her as villain and victim.

Who does the best post show analysis? Slate?

Slate has wonderful dish, it’s a must. The AV Club is my favorite for commentary. Also Basket of Kisses is a kicky site that puts a great emphasis on the ladies of Mad Men. Also, artist Dyna Mo! She created the Mad Men Yourself site for AMC and does beautiful illustrations of a scene from Mad Men once a week on her flickr site.

Why is the date of Roger Sterling’s daughter’s upcoming wedding significant?

Oh dear. Events at a parade in Dallas are going to overshadow her special day and put a general damper on you know, THE COUNTRY.

Why Meditations in an Emergency?

Ah, what a glorious choice! Totally risky, right? But what a great payoff. So many reasons. Ok, let’s start with the title. It just taps right into the sense of slow moving dread and forced introspection of Don Draper and the whole mood of the show. Also, O’Hara’s verses are so wry and punchy, so easily digestible that it reads like the best ad copy and vice versa.

Check out our dedicated issue in today’s Shelf Awareness and catch up on what we have coming this fall!

Stanley Fish gets curious about curiosity in his latest post for The New York Times.

Food writers Amanda Hesser and Merrill Stubbs announced today that they are launching Food52 (www.food52.com), a new website that celebrates the home cook. The site provides a place for home cooks to share recipes, cooking photos and videos, and will sponsor a weekly recipe contest, in which Hesser and Stubbs will choose the finalists and the site community will vote on the winners. The winners will then be collected in THE FOOD52 COOKBOOK, which will be published by HarperStudio.

We’re getting hungry already…

We’re so proud of our author, Theresa Brown, who was invited to Washington, D.C. this past Thursday to attend President Obama’s speech about health care to a group of nurses. Theresa was introduced to the President before his speech, in which he quoted her recent blog on the New York Times website, as follows:

Now, amid all the chatter and the noise on radio and TV, with all the falsehoods that are promoted by not just talk show hosts but sometimes prominent politicians, sometimes it can be easy to lose sight of what the debate over reform is all about. It’s about stories like the one told by an oncology nurse named Theresa Brown. A few weeks ago, Theresa wrote a blog post about a patient of hers. He was in his 60s, a recent grandfather, a Steelers fan — (applause) — spent the last three months of his life worrying about mounting medical bills.

And she wrote: “My patient thought he had planned well for his health care needs. He just never thought he would wake up one day with a diagnosis of leukemia. But which of us does?” she asked. And then she wrote: “That’s why we need health care reform.”

Nurses, that’s why we need health care reform. I am absolutely confident that if you continue to do your part — nurses, you guys have a lot of credibility; you touch a lot of people’s lives; people trust you — if you’re out there saying it’s time for us to act, we need to go ahead and make a change — if all of us do our parts, not just here in Washington but all across the country, then we will bid farewell to the days when our health care system was a source of worry to families and a drag on our economy, and America will finally join the ranks of every other advanced nation by providing quality, affordable health insurance to all of its citizens. That’s our goal. We are going to meet it this year with your help. Thank you very much, everybody. God bless you. (Applause.)

We’re publishing Theresa’s extraordinary book, Critical Care: A Nurse’s First Year, next June. (We’ll make sure to send President Obama an early copy!)

Click through to view the video and advance to the 12 minute mark to catch the exciting clip!

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I wonder which book was just too good to put down…

Theresa Brown, a nurse who has been writing for the New York Times’ website, and whose book about her first year of nursing (Critical Care) will be published by HarperStudio next June, 2010, has just posted an eloquent essay about one young patient, and what his treatment should teach us about “end-of-life care.” It makes us wish that nurses had a larger voice in the current health care debate, since they are often the ones actually delivering that care–and seeing its results.

For the last few weeks I’ve been eating, breathing, and sleeping with The Beatles on the brain–but with good reason. We’re publishing You Never Give Me Your Money: The Battle for the Soul of the Beatles by Peter Doggett, a British journalist and rock historian, which is slated to come out Summer 2010. As the title suggests, the book explores in meticulous detail the events that lead up to the break-up and the eventual collapse of their cooperative experiment, Apple Corps. 

Lucky for us, even though the group disbanded nearly four decades ago, The Beatles are back! Today marks the release of the highly anticipated The Beatles: Rock Band, along with remastered versions of The Beatles’ entire discography. There is something magical about listening to this montage of Beatles classics and watching the Fab Four come back to life. And of course, I can’t wait to rock out (virtually) at The Cavern or in a field of psychadellic, LSD inspired flowers. Rock bands may come and go, but The Beatles never die.

p.s. John Lennon would be happy to know that Beatlemania 2.0 would make its resurgence on 09/09/09 – his lucky number was 9!