Mr. Playboy Hugh Hefner And The American Dream HC

Description

This item is not available online, but it may be available at one of our NYC stores. Please call us at 800-411-3341, or 212-302-8192 (if you're calling within NYC). If we have the item you can order by phone for home delivery or in-store pickup. "When Hugh Hefner quit his job at Esquire to start a magazine called Playboy, he didn't just want to make money. He wanted to make dreams come true. The first issue of Playboy had a Sherlock Holmes story by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, an article on the Dorsey brothers, and a feature on desk design for the modern office, called ""Gentlemen, Be Seated."" Hefner wrote much of the copy himself and drew all the cartoons. But the most memorable part by far was the set of pictures he bought from a local calendar printer of a scantily clad Marilyn Monroe.
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. Hefner became one of the most hated and envied celebrities in America, dating a long list of his magazine's beauties and always standing just barely on the wrong side of decency and moral uprightness. He also, at one time, had 7 million subscribers to his magazine. Though in time he would lose readers to more explicit magazines on one side and ""lad"" magazines on the other, the Playboy brand never lost its luster."