• Forbes , Monday, November 17, 2008 10:45 AM

Jerry Della Femina, meanwhile, recommends that we all read Juliann Sivulka's Ad Women: How They Impact What We Need, Want, and Buy (Prometheus Books, $26.98 [sic]) by revealing that he texted his daughter, a recent graduate interested in an advertising career, that she should check it out. "Then I paused for a long few seconds, laughed at myself for hesitating, and sent a text with the same note to my son, a marketing student at USC," he writes.

Weaving in war stories from his own career, including a 1975 discussion with three other men -- but no women -- about how to position a tampon, Della Femina seems particularly impressed by Sivulka's scholarship. Among other things, he reveals that Mathilde C. Weil started the M.C. Weil Agency years before J. Walter Thompson, recognized by many as the first advertising agency, was founded.

"Sivulka has written a sweeping, insightful, encyclopedic treatment that not only enables us to understand women's role in advertising but also makes a social commentary on the role of advertising in our culture," Della Femina writes.

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