"Both His Echo and His Evolution"

"Here’s what I found: In each story, a small world of alienation and humor and despair, a meditation on family or work, the city or the suburbs, travel or stasis, success or failure. Stories that resist neat epiphany. Stories that capture the pivot points of the 20th century. This last one matters very much; 14 years into the new century, we’re still processing the seismic cultural shifts of the last one. We live in the world the ’60s made, and made possible."

In Salon, Rebecca Makkai connects Mad Men to John Cheever.