Funny Business: Moguls, Mobsters, Megastars, and the Mad, Mad World of the Ad Game

A famous ad for Levy’s Jewish Rye Bread showed an African-American kid, smiling after biting a deli sandwich obviously made with their product. The headline read: You don’t have to be Jewish to love Levy’s. And you don’t have to be in advertising (or even in business) to love these laugh-out-loud stories, a result of Allen Rosenshine’s nearly 45 years in advertising.The moguls he’s known – many of America’s most recognizable captains of industry – appear in scenes uncustomary to any corporate boardroom. The mobsters he’s dealt with come off as characters far more comic than threatening. The megastars he’s met, from presidents to pop artists to pro athletes, are captured here as no camera has ever seen them. When these crowds mixed with the madcap world of Madison Avenue, it was never business as usual.Funny Business is funny, it’s about business, but more than that, it’s about being human. It’s about all of us– the only creatures on earth that can really laugh, most meaningfully at ourselves.