Mr. Playboy: Hugh Hefner and the American Dream (ISBN 1433249243)

Amazon.com Review:
Amazon Exclusive: 10 Things You Didn't Know About Hugh Hefner and the Playboy Mansion 1. He has been keeping an exhaustive "scrapbook" of his life since adolescence, which now consists of over 1800 volumes and takes up much of the third floor of the Mansion. 2. His favorite weekly event is Monday's "Manly Night," a gathering of longstanding male friends for an evening devoted to eating, trading friendly insults and stories, and watching old films. 3. Hefner became obsessed with backgammon in the 1970s, playing in tournaments at the Mansion that attracted world-class players and lasted for hours, sometimes days. 4. He was deeply traumatized during his college days when his fiancé confessed that she was involved in a sexual affair. 5. He nearly choked to death in the late 1970s after ingesting a small sex toy during a raucous lovemaking session with his girlfriend. She dislodged it with the Heimlich maneuver. 6. Hefner was a strong backer of the civil rights movement in the late 1950s and early 1960s, contributing money and booking African American entertainers for his television show and the Playboy Clubs. 7. The Mansion library still prominently displays a large ceramic bust of Barbi Benton, Hefner's girlfriend from the late 1960s and early 1970s. 8. The Mansion staff is inundated with requests for invitations to Hefner's big parties. Some are from celebrities who want to bring their friends, and many are from young women who send photos of themselves in skimpy clothing and provocative poses. Nearly all are turned down. 9. Every bathroom at the Mansion is equipped with a bottle of baby oil, bottle of aspirin, and Jergens cherry-almond skin lotion. During big parties, many of them also have bowls filled with condoms. 10. Hefner has all of his meals brought to him in his bedroom suite at the Mansion. Even when the Mansion is filled with dozens of guests enjoying an elegant buffet meal for movie nights on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, he eats in his room before joining the crowd.

Interesting and surprisingly substantial.:
I work for the publisher and got a copy of this book from the editor. I was expecting a fun read, and it is, but it also makes a strong case for Hefner as a major force affecting American culture. There's a lot of good storytelling along the way (and quite a few pictures). Also, the centerfold cracked me up.

Hef's Not Only Living the Dream, He Created It:
I've been waiting a long time for the definitive biography of Hugh Hefner, a guy I've always had a certain fascination and admiration for - and here it is. Not just a shallow pop bio, this is a highly readable, insightful, and entertaining look into the life and times of one of pop culture's most recognizable, controversial, and ultimately beloved icons. Mr. Playboy digs past the popular assumptions about Hef and even his own self-created image to lay bare the truth about the man who was the tip of the spear of the sexual revolution, and who literally invented the lifestyle of the modern playboy. The author does a great job of situating the Playboy phenomenon and its creator in the larger social, political, and cultural setting. The book even includes material on the successful The Girls Next Door reality TV show, so it's as up-to-date as it could possibly be. Lots of good photos, including - naturally - a centerfold. It's a wild ride. If you have any interest or curiosity at all in the man and the magazine, you won't be disappointed by this book.

Portrait of a cultural giant:
This book was riveting. I listened to the audible version and was unable to gt out of the car at times. Well written, exquisitely documented, it provided a complete view of an amazing man. His drive and energy left me breathless not to mention the sex adventures. Who could do that? But the real value of the book was in the description of the cultural revolutions that took place over five decades. How we evolved as Americans and the part that Hugh Hefter had in this. He was an intellectual giant who stood for a great philosophy that was a lightening rod for stodgy sexually fearful conservative people.

Not A Lightweight:
This book is a serious addition to several past books written about Hefner and Playboy. The book is well written by a gentleman who is a college professor and the author of 4 other books, including biographies on Henry Ford and Walt Disney. This author writes well with more than occasional strokes of literary competence. He spends plenty of time fleshing out (sorry) Hefner's personal sex life; thus there is more than a fair amount of material that a number of readers would find interesting on a somewhat high class voyeur basis (no explicit details). So, why 4 stars? Much time is spent discussing the Playboy Magazine philosophy of life as well as political inclinations as they evolved from the magazine's beginning in 1953. The author spends too much time with this, and I think many readers will find themselves bogged down in what was rather boring the first time it was printed in the magazine and still is boring. This would have been a better book if more detail was put forth with regard to Hefner's life and less about Playboy's philosophy. Notwithstanding, on the whole this is a good book that is interesting and well written by a man that appeared to know his subject.

A Contrary View:
I am listening to the audio version, with two disks still to go. Yawn. Perhaps the print version would have been better since it would have been supplemented with pictures. How is it possible to make Playboy this boring??? The book alternates between the author's numerous textbook-analyses of Playboy's and society's changes over the years, to dry recitations of timelines and reported facts (names of authors published in the magazine, names of Playmates, names of artists playing at a concert, etc). Even the Playmates and special girlfriends are not given any life in this ponderous book. IMO, anyone looking for entertainment and fun stories about Playboy or its publisher should keep looking.