In Over My Head: The Adventures of a Brooklyn Bad Boy Who Became a Madison Avenue Prince

This hilarious new autobiography tells how advertising legend Henry Holtzman escaped the jungle of Brownsville, Brooklyn, for the zoo that was Madison Avenue in its “Golden Age.”

“My mother cried when I was born, and they weren’t tears of joy. Years later I was told that I was covered in black hair, and she thought I looked like a monkey. My mother was always one for appearances.”

So began Holtzman’s defiant and rollicking journey.

A skinny kid with a wiseass attitude, he was a comical failure as a juvenile delinquent, but a spectacular success as one of advertising’s brightest stars.

In Over My Head is filled with adventures and misadventures that are hilarious, frightening, dramatic, romantic, and psychedelic. It mirrors the tumultuous years of the 1950s, ‘60s, and ‘70s, as Holtzman navigates his chaotic path upward, never once letting on that he’s in over his head.