Mr. Playboy: Hugh Hefner and the American Dream

Product Information

F]ascinating…offers readers new insights into the life of one of the most renowned entrepreneurs of the twentieth century.

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. Most purchases from business sellers are protected by the Consumer Contract Regulations 2013 which give you the right to cancel the purchase within 14 days after the day you receive the item.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.

If we're to believe this book, it's the Truth about Hugh Hefner--and, by proxy, about American life since the 1950s. Gives us a vivid portrait of the man behind Mickey Mouse, while at the same time situating his anomalous achievement within a social and aesthetic context. 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.

Watts’ books have led to involvement in a number of media projects, including several films for PBS, the History Channel, and documentary venues in Germany and Brazil. Like it or not, Hugh Hefner has affected all of us, so I treasured learning about how and why in the sober biography. Like many of us, Heff found that the demands of hard work, ambition and other social pressures meant that he could never actually meet the ideals that he turned away from. 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.

He also succeeds in identifying and exploring raging personal paradoxes hedonist and workaholic, libertine and romantic, provocateur and traditionalist while resisting the urge to attempt reconciliation. 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. Hefner resembles a chameleon in Watt′s mostly sympathetic portrait, variously appearing as a prescient social critic, an early supporter of civil rights, a generous Gatsby figure and a cranky, obsessive sex addict. The book provides plenty of biographical detail and it does a creditable job of making connections between the personal and the political. Heff's own life reveals an early life beset by a lack of self-satisfaction and a strong desire to be a good husband.Steven Watts's biography presents a more complex personality lurking behind the pipe and smoking jacket, and Ray Porter's courtly manner suggests indignation, and near envy, over Hefner's excesses. This book also illustrates how the social conditions of this post-war period changed to cater for the individual consumerist desires of today. Gorgeous young women in revealing poses; extravagant mansion parties packed with celebrities; a hot-tub grotto, elegant smoking jackets, and round rotating beds; the hedonistic pursuit of uninhibited sex—put these images together and a single name springs to mind: Hugh Hefner.