Mr Playboy: Hugh Hefner and the American Dream

From his spectacular launch of iPlayboy/i magazine to his recent television hit iThe Girls Next Door,/i Hugh Hefner has attracted public attention and controversy for decades. But how did a man who is at once socially astute and morally unconventional, part Bill Gates and part Casanova, also evolve into a figure at the forefront of cultural change?pGranted unprecedented access to the man and his enterprise, historian and biographer Steven Watts argues that Hefner has profoundly altered American life and values. Punctuated with anecdotes of life at the Playboy Mansions, the book tells the compelling and uniquely American story of how one person with a provocative idea, a finger on the pulse of popular opinion, and a passion for his work altered the course of modern history.Acknowledgments.pIntroduction: The Boy Next Door.pChapter One: A Boy at Play.pChapter Two: Boot Camp, College, and Kinsey.pChapter Three: The Tie That Binds.pChapter Four: How to Win Friends and Titillate People.pChapter Five: Hedonism, Inc.pChapter Six: The Pursuit of Happiness.pChapter Seven: An Abundant Life.pChapter Eight: Living the Fantasy.pChapter Nine: The Philosopher King.pChapter Ten: The Happiness Explosion.pChapter Eleven: Make Love, Not War.pChapter Twelve: What Do Women Want?pChapter Thirteen: Down the Rabbit Hole.pChapter Fourteen: Disneyland for Adults.pChapter Fifteen: A Hutch Divided.pChapter Sixteen: The Dark Decade.pChapter Seventeen: The Party's Over.pChapter Eighteen: Strange Bedfellows.pChapter Nineteen: The Bride Wore Clothes.pChapter Twenty: All in the Family.pChapter Twenty-One: Back in the Game.pEpilogue: Playboy Nation.Riveting... Watts packs in plenty of gasp-inducing passages.--iNewark Star Ledger/ipLike it or not, Hugh Hefner has affected all of us, so I treasured learning about how and why in the sober biography.--iChicago Sun Times/ipThis is a fun book. How could it not be? Watts aims to