From Those Wonderful Folks Who Gave You Pearl Harbor

Front-Line Dispatches from the Advertising War

By: Jerry Della Femina, Charles Sopkin

Narrated by: Peter Berkrot

Length: 7 hrs and 20 mins

Publisher's summary

Vividly reminiscent of the goings-on at Sterling Cooper - the late nights, the three-martini lunches, the sex on couches, and, of course, the actual work of plugging products - this is the story of what Madison Avenue was really like in the 1960s. A worldwide best seller when first published in 1970, this frank, irreverent, and hilarious memoir is a one-of-a-kind cult classic.

©1970; renewed 1998 Jerry Della Femina and Charles Spokin (P)2010 Tantor

Critic reviews

"Reads like the transcript of a tape made at a bar or cocktail party with the recorder propped up next to the raconteur at the center of the crowd." ( Salon)

Hugely entertaining

A hugely entertaining book first published in 1970. Although it's loosely arranged in chapters, FROM THOSE WONDERFUL FOLKS . . . is really a collection of well-polished, funny anecdotes about the advertising business during the "Creative Revolution" of the 1960s. The narrator is excellent, too--a lively, engaging voice for a book that sounds as if someone is telling you great stories at a party.

Della Femina's tales of creative types, stuffy clients, outrageous stunts, and, yes, lots of sex and drinking within the firm will be familiar to you if you're a fan of the series Mad Men, as a newly written introduction points out. You'll also gather information about advertising that will give you new respect for the series and what really happens in the creative process.

Some audiobooks are ones that you feel you have to finish, and others are ones that you look forward to listening to every day. This is a "look forward to" book.

An authentic voice from the golden age of advertising.

I’ve worked in advertising for the last 30 years but only now got around to Femina’s classic book. It’s all here, the stories, the setbacks, the personalities that ultimately populated the Mad Men series — and destroyed the old Hollywood image of glamorous advertising.

Like any ad creative type, Femina has a hard time sticking to a single plot-line. And like any writer from back then, his prose is packed with the awkward and unfortunate phraseology that serves as a stark reminder that we have indeed come a long way.

But there are quite a few genuinely astonishing stories of creative genius in action told, with heart and humor, by a wise guy perched smack dab in the middle of it all.

You're better off watching "Mad Men"

Originally published in 1970, the author, an advertising exec working on Madison Avenue in the 1960's, reveals the inside dynamics of the advertising business of that era. However, its revelations, which were likely shocking at the time of the book's original publication, are better and more dramatically explored in the program “Mad Men,” and seem pretty tame now in light of subsequent revelations about the inner working of corporations. I had been hoping for more case histories of actual advertising campaigns, but this only constitutes a very small portion of the book. To be honest, this book would probably have been long forgotten if not for the program.