Mr. Playboy: Hugh Hefner and the American Dream

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Ray Porter has garnered two Audie nominations as well as several Earphones Awards and enthusiastic reviews for his sparkling narration of audiobooks. The author, Steven Watts, is a historian and he does an excellent job of providing context as the Playboy publisher's story unfolds. From his spectacular launch of Playboy magazine and the dizzying expansion of his leisure empire to his recent television hit The Girls Next Door, the publisher has attracted public attention and controversy for decades. If we re to believe this book, it s the Truth about Hugh Hefner and, by proxy, about American life since the 1950s.

He proved instrumental with his influential magazine, syndicated television shows, fashionable nightclubs, swanky resorts, and movie and musical projects in making popular culture into a dominant force in many people′s lives. Martin's, 2016) offers a compelling new reading of the 35th president as a cultural figure in modern America. Advance Uncorrected Proof signed by Hugh Hefner and author Steven Watts both on Title page in black pen, signatures only.

He reveals that Hefner, from the beginning, believed he could overturn social norms and take America with him. Although advocating women's sexual freedom and their liberation from traditional family constraints, the publisher became a whipping boy for feminists who viewed him as a prophet for a new kind of male domination. Distinctly different from their later works, Burroughs and Kerouac's collaborative 1945 novel (unpublished until 2008) reimagines their experience when one of their friends killed his lover. SIGNED by Watts, Hefner, Larry Flynt, Bunny Yeager, and Dita von Teese in black ink to ffp and title page. In this wise and penetrating biography, intellectual historian Steven Watts looks at what Hugh Hefner went onto become, and how he took America with him.

Playboy , Hefner's ideal for living -- marked by his allegiances to Tarzan, Freud, Pepsi-Cola and jazz -- proves to be a kind of gloss on the Protestant work ethic. Heff's own life reveals an early life beset by a lack of self-satisfaction and a strong desire to be a good husband.He is the author of four books, including The People's Tycoon: Henry Ford and the American Century and The Magic Kingdom: Walt Disney and the American Way of Life. He shows Hefner′s personal dichotomies the pleasure seeker and the workaholic, the consort of countless Playmates and the genuine romantic, the family man and the Gatsby–like host of lavish parties at his Chicago and Los Angeles mansions who enjoys well–publicized affairs with numerous Playmates, the fan of life′s simple pleasures who hobnobs with the Hollywood elite. Choice Reviews , May 2009) "Just past the round rotating bed, beyond the hot–tub grotto but before the pajama–draped walk–in, lies what? Watts, a history professor turned biographer, analyzes the life and times of Hugh Hefner in this fascinating biography.

The 103 third parties who use cookies on this service do so for their purposes of displaying and measuring personalized ads, generating audience insights, and developing and improving products. His strong voice contains a certain journalistic integrity that holds the listener’s attention, and his unbiased tone allows listeners to draw their own conclusions about Hefner. Even when it's clear Hefner might have made a mistake, he's still shown as the victim, or that it was a misunderstanding. He didn't stop thrusting in and out until they reached their climax and shouting in so much satisfaction. Gorgeous young women in revealing poses; extravagant mansion parties packed with celebrities; a hot-tub grotto, elegant smoking jackets, and round rotating beds; and, the hedonistic pursuit of uninhibited sex - put these images together and a single name springs to mind - Hugh Hefner.Circulation peaked in the swinging ′70s (as did an ugly drug controversy); the ′80s were less kind, as the brand seemed dated. He proved instrumental–with his influential magazine, syndicated television shows, fashionable nightclubs, swanky resorts, and movie and musical projects–in making popular culture into a dominant force in many people′s lives. But Watts, a history professor prone to interpreting American Dreamers (he has written stellar works on Henry Ford and Walt Disney), is wise to draw a narrow bead on Hef qua Hef, dividing his life into tidy quadrants of postwar influence and iconography: as sexual liberator, avatar of consumerism, pop-culture purveyor, lightning rod for feminist ire. Examining Playboy archives (Hef is something of a pack rat) and Hefner's own journals, Watts (History/Univ. Granted unprecedented access to the man and his enterprise, Watts traces Hef''s life and career from his midwestern, Methodist upbringing and the first publication of Playboy in 1953 through the turbulent sixties, self-indulgent seventies, reactionary eighties, and traditionalist nineties, up to the present.

Choice Reviews , May 2009) "Just past the round rotating bed, beyond the hot-tub grotto but before the pajama-draped walk-in, lies … what? Critics sought to ban Playboy, with many accusing it of contributing to a moral degradation of society. Watts outlines the man and magazine′s influence on the country′s notions of personal liberation, sexual freedom, and material abundance. Playboy" is no longer the cultural force it used to be, but it made a stamp on society' - "Associated Press".

Watts finds Hefner comparable to the subjects of his other books about Henry Ford and Walt Disney in that all were major contributors to aspects of the American dream. Newark Star Ledger ) ""Like it or not, Hugh Hefner has affected all of us, so I treasured learning about how and why in the sober biography.