Mr. Playboy: Hugh Hefner and the American Dream

by Steven Watts

The real Hugh Hefner-the extraordinary inside story of an American icon

"Riveting... Watts packs in plenty of gasp-inducing passages."-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."-Chicago Sun Times

"This is a fun book. How could it not be? Watts aims to give a full account of the man, his magazine and their place in social history. Playboy is no longer the cultural force it used to be, but it made a stamp on society."-Associated Press

"In Steven Watts' exhaustive, illuminating biography Mr. 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."-Los Angeles TimesGorgeous 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. 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. 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?In Mr. Playboy, historian and biographer Steven Watts argues that, in the process of becoming fabulously wealthy and famous, Hefner has profoundly altered American life and values. 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. He reveals that Hefner, from the beginning, believed he could overturn social norms and take America with him.This fascinating portrait illustrates four ways in which Hefner and Playboy stood at the center of several cultural upheavals that remade the postwar United States. The publisher played a crucial role in the sexual revolution that upended traditional notions of behavior and expectation regarding sex. He emerged as one of the most influential advocates of a rapidly developing consumer culture, flooding Playboy readers with images of material abundance and a leisurely lifestyle. 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. Ironically, Hefner also became a controversial force in the movement for women's rights. 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.Throughout, Watts offers singular insights into the real man behind the flamboyant public persona. 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.Punctuated throughout with descriptions and anecdotes of life at the Playboy Mansions, Mr. Playboy 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.

Spans from Hefner's childhood to the launch of Playboy magazine and the expansion of t

Genres: Biography, Nonfiction, History, Audiobook, Business, Biography Memoir, Journalism

568 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2008

About the author

A specialist in the cultural and intellectual history of the United States, Steven Watts is Professor Emeritus in History at the University of Missouri.

Reviews

[Scott · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Within a few years of starting Playboy on a shoestring after begging and borrowing a few thousand dollars, [Hugh] Hefner became a serious, influential figure in modern culture. Yet the question of how and why the publisher of a risqué men's magazine was able to garner such influence, and even prestige, has perplexed many observers. [He] played a key role in changing American values, ideas, and attitudes. From the beginning, his enterprise was about more than dirty pictures . . . " -- on page 3

Although published when he was still alive during his final decade - yet this was not a fully-authorized and/or officially-sanctioned book from the man's estate, to be clear - the Hugh Hefner biography Mr. Playboy also serves as a behind-the-scenes glimpse into the history of the infamous magazine which began in 1953. Simply put - I don't know how well it will translate to a present-day audience after the realizations and reveals of some less-than-savory aspects in show biz during the past five or six years. I'm not suggesting it necessarily be targeted by the cancel culture set, but its 2008 'happily ever after' conclusion - in which Hef finds love via a trio of Playmate girlfriends (who starred in the 'reality' TV series The Girls Next Door) - now hits quite a sour note with Holly Madison and Kendra Wilkinson lamenting the problematic experiences and aftereffects of their time spent in the Playboy Mansion. But was it a good book? Yes, it was well-researched and very detailed both about the man and his magazine. Love it or dislike it (or him?), Hefner sought to break the U.S. out of its Victorian-era funk - though author Watts notes that Hefner often mistakenly referred to it as 'Puritanical' - in regards to the sexual lifestyles and freedoms that still held sway well into the 20th century. Whether this was good or bad (or right or wrong) is not for me to say, but it was engrossing to read about how, during the magazine's peak of popularity from the late 50's into the early 70's, it was quite the influential periodical. That old joke about reading it 'for the articles'? Given the line-up of in-depth interviews (ranging from Jimmy Carter to John Lennon) and/or writers (like Steinbeck, Bradbury, et al.) offering original fiction, it seems like it should not be relegated to punchline status.

[britt_brooke · Rating 3 out of 5]

From a business, societal, and social standpoint, this is utterly fascinating. But Hefner himself was a walking, talking, screwing contradiction.

[Elizabeth · Rating 2 out of 5]

hefner is certainly a cultural player worthy of a thoughtful biography; however, i remain unconvinced that mr. playboy needed its full 453 pages. my biggest complaint was the wordiness, the repetitiveness. i felt the book could have been shortened by at least 100 pgs. entire chapters felt unnecessary, such as chapter seven which, except for a few paragraphs about his political interests, was largely a reiteration of ideas well covered in previous chapters. while there is some discussion of how the playboy aesthetic differed from more traditional, explicit pornography, the author could have delved deeper. the playboy look was well crafted--natural girls, mostly unknown, photographed in natural poses, often as if interrupted mid-task. this aesthetic always seemed, to me, to be the magazine's most pervasive, lasting effect on culture as well as one of its most interesting aspects: the unabashed fuckability of the 'everyday' girl. whether a waitress, coed, or "radical political activist," the available girl could be anywhere, is everywhere.

overall, i wanted to see less generalized discussions of hef's role in the sexual revolution and the counterculture of the 60s, and more analysis about how specifically he helped foster, as the author argues throughout, said cultural changes.

a fun clit fact: the first instance of the word clitoris in playboy is during the 1968 interview with masters and johnson whose research hef's playboy foundation helped fund.

[Chessmen · Rating 5 out of 5]

I found it funny that the same author of Mr.Playboy also wrote a biography on Walt Disney. Clearly he sees them both as iconic American entertainers who transformed their societies through the creation of their personal fantasies.

Hefner never published his own autobiography in whole, so this is the most complete biography you'll get! The author (professor of histroy) gives Mr.Playboy the scholarly treatment, analyzing how and to what extent Playboy magazine influenced American society. He concludes that we essentially live in a "Playboy world" and whatever we think of Hefner, is really how we see ourselves.
This book shows Hefner as an elegant gentleman who fought hard for social justice, racial equality and free speech. Never would you see him here as the aging pornographer who creeps on young women as some critics would argue. Contrary to the old man in pajamas you might see on tabloids today, this book shows you an idealistic man who truly believes in a world where dreams come true and where morality is measured in the amount of total happiness it brings to everyone.

[Bunny · Rating 3 out of 5]

Hugh Hefner is a douchebag. If you know this already, and you know that the grotto exists, you don't need to read the book.

Okay, that's not really fair. The book has a lot of interesting information from the start of the magazine. I wasn't so much interested in Hefner as I was in the origins of the magazine, and the trials and tribulations. Having to deal with Hefner's opinion that women were inferior to men and how, despite his hatred of his "Puritan" upbringing, and his own "bisexual encounters", he still went along with the belief that homosexuality was a perversion, then a sickness.

I got really irritated by the majority of the book, but there were interesting parts. I wouldn't recommend it, either way.

[Sam Quinones · Rating 4 out of 5]

In America, our revolutionaries always seem to be cultural or economic.

We started with political revolutionaries, but unique in history, they were all lawyers. This is why, I figure, our revolution fared better than those that quickly followed – the French, in particular, but also the Mexican, and so on.

Instead, our upheavals have mostly come from some part of the private sector.

Which is why I grabbed Mr. Playboy: Hugh Hefner and the American Dream, a terrific 2008 book by retired University of Missouri historian Steven Watts, when I came upon it in a bin at the Goodwill Outlet near my house.

I opened the book just wanting to learn how Hefner started Playboy magazine, which seemed so radical when it appeared in 1953.

Hefner began the magazine with nothing but some money from his family and a conviction that he was rebelling against the country’s Puritan impulse and that of his Methodist upbringing.

Driven, he lived on fried chicken and Pepsi, virtually a shut-in at Playboy in those early years.
His life was about male fantasies realized, one after another. Probably more than any other prominent American, Hefner would faithfully embody the most important theme of each of the next five decades in our nation’s life.

In the 1950s, he was all about breaking down the sexual taboos, and combining that with the country’s emerging material prosperity to propose a new Playboy lifestyle to Americans tired of war and Depression.

His magazine was at the vanguard of that societal change in America. In Playboy, the centerfold was no longer reserved for stars, but instead ordinary, though gorgeous, young women. The Playboy centerfold “appeared as an icon of sexual liberation in the 1950s,” Watts writes, “suggesting that, as Hefner liked to put it, `nice girls like sex, too.’”

In the 1960s, his empire booming, Hefner espoused left-wing views: anti-Vietnam, pro-Civil Rights, pro-women’s rights and legalized abortion. This coalesced with his Playboy Philosophy of sexual liberation as part of larger personal and political liberation American now seemed to thirst for. The magazine carried serious interviews and journalism that reflected that. He employed some of the emerging writers of the time – Hunter Thompson, Joan Didion, Gay Talese, Joyce Carol Oates, Tom Wolfe -- to whom Playboy gave ample space and wages for their work.

Americans tired of political activism in the 1970s. No one better reflected the Me Decade than Hugh Hefner. His Playboy clubs were booming. They, and the Playboy Mansions – first in Chicago, decamping then to Los Angeles -- became centers for movie, rock, and sports stars to be seen, hang out with Hef, hook up with some Playmate. Hefner’s espousal of political activism gradually faded.

He had various girlfriends at once, all in their mid-20s, as he aged. (He was born in 1926). He was the audience he imagined for his magazine, and, he said, “committed to the idea of non-commitment.”
In the summer of 1972, reaching adolescence, I discovered Playboy in a California beach house we rented for a week, which happened to coincide with the Munich Olympics.

I spent a significant part of that week looking at the stash of Playboys I found in a closet. Consuming my memories of that week are Palestinian terrorist attacks on Israeli Olympic wrestlers and Liv Lindeland, Playmate of the Year, the most beautiful woman I’d seen naked up to then. A fairly jarring, probably unhealthy but unavoidable, combination.

It was apparently during the 1970s when Hefner took his rebellion against sexual taboos beyond monogamy to include group sex. Better put, him having sex with several women much younger than he at the same time.

This was matched with an obsession with other realized fantasies. He grew up intoxicated with movies of the 1930s and 1940s. For decades afterward, he had weekly movie nights, showing old films. He played games incessantly: Monopoly, pinball, and especially backgammon. Watts writes of Hefner staging three-day backgammon marathons. Breaking only for sex with one woman or two or five.

By the 1980s, America had adopted many of the ideas Hugh Hefner put forward in his Playboy Philosophy. Seems to me that you’d be hard pressed to find another magazine that so influenced the changes in American mores.

But that decade was a tough one for Hefner and Playboy. The feminist left attacked him for his objectification of women as “playmates,” among others things. So did the Reagan Right. The two formed an unlikely alliance, pursuing pornographers, whose paragon, in their view, was Hugh Hefner.

Radical feminists Catherine McKinnon and Andrew Dworkin, in what was the beginnings of political correctness, called for banning pornography. The Meese Commission set about to investigate pornography and pornographers.

Hefner fought back in his pages and in media interviews. But the murder of Playmate of the Year Dorothy Stratten (in 1980), AIDS, and the perception that Hefner, in pajamas, surrounded by blonde women who never seemed to age, withered his image by the end of the decade.

In the 1990s, he dropped the pajamas, and opted for monogamy, marriage, children, in the spirit of the decade’s New Traditionalism. When that ended in divorce, largely because of his young wife’s desire to eliminate much of the partying and endless guests at her now-home, but which her husband had grown to love.

Hefner returned to the bevy of blonde females in the 2000s.

I confess before reading this book, I had rarely thought about Hugh Hefner in the decades since finding those Playboys in 1972. I remember once, sometime in the 2000s, being surprised to hear he was still alive. He seemed to me a joke.

That’s how our cultural revolutionaries tend to end up. It happened to Elvis, who died fat and with ten drugs in his system.

I just re-watched the magnificent movie Capote, with Phillip Seymour Hoffman. Truman Capote revolutionized nonfiction, creating a new genre with the first “true crime” book, In Cold Blood (1966). He was America’s most famous writer for several years, the toast of Studio 54 and endless New York parties. He never completed another book, and died 18 years later from liver disease and drug intoxication.

Same can be said for Hunter Thompson – whose “gonzo journalism” created a rebel image of the writer that launched his fame. It was an image he either couldn’t or wouldn’t shake. After a creative spasm that produced some of the great “journalism” of the 1960s and early 1970s, he devolved into a caricature of himself, partying away precious writing time and energy with rock stars and sycophants who visited him in his home in Aspen. He shot himself to death in 2005, his best work decades behind him.

Political revolutionaries, when they fall, are often the victim of the worst human impulses that they themselves have unleashed. Think Trotsky or Robespierre. Or they become essentially the dictators they revolted against. Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua. Hugo Chavez and Nicolas Maduro in Venezuela.

Our modern-day cultural revolutionaries are consumed by excess. Poisoned by relentless adoration, too much money or power, and perhaps unable to disbelieve their own press clippings, their presence outlives their relevance.

Or they’re economic revolutionaries, who become the elites whose ramparts they stormed. Our tech bros seem intent on destroying their image as nerdy rebels disrupting old oligarchies, and improving American life. Google’s motto for a while was, literally, “Don’t be evil.” (The company dropped the motto in 2015 for “Do the right thing.”)

Many of tech’s once-vital rebels have become sick jokes – tech versions of Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua -- pursuing wealth regardless of the harms their algorithms so clearly inflict.

Hefner weathered the test of time far better than many cultural and economic revolutionaries.

He and his magazine presided over, and chronicled, major transformations of post-war American life, Watts argues: Our sexual revolution; the supremacy of consumer culture; the rise of the feminist movement as part of “Hefner’s `dream of personal, political and economic freedom’” and despite the trenchant critiques the movement leveled at him.

Hefner was, Watts writes, “a major architect of America’s dominant culture of self-fulfillment in the twentieth century,” comparable to Henry Ford and Walt Disney – two other American cultural/economic revolutionaries Watts profiled.

“For good or ill,” Watts writes, “we do live in a Playboy world in modern America.”

Hugh Hefner died in 2017. He was 91.

Three years later, Playboy ceased print publication and is today a lifestyle website.

[Rhoda Alfeche · Rating 1 out of 5]

It's about the man who built an empire on pleasure. But midway to reading it, I had to stop before getting brainwashed into the logic of: if it doesn't feel good, it must be bad. Standing by integrity and being responsible does not always "feel" good, but when it is thrown away, there is nothing left that matters.

I read enough about his life for me to realize that I can live a life of passion, but I want to be responsible about it.

[Abdul · Rating 2 out of 5]

Book was mildly interesting. In my humble opinion Mr. Hefner was in the right place at the right time. He tries to make it seem as though he invented this genius lifestyle that could not have been invented by anyone else.

[AndrewP · Rating 3 out of 5]

More than just a simple biography of Hugh Hefner's life, this book goes into a lot of detail about the social and cultural changes that the whole Playboy magazine and philosophy helped bring about. If it wasn't for Hefner, then much of the current American lifestyle of liberal consumerism may have taken much longer to evolve, or ended up very different.

To say that Hefner lived a very interesting life is of course an understatement and stating the obvious. A lot of his early success stemmed from really hard work and an almost obsessive drive to push his view of the world out to the masses. In the early years this worked out very well, but in the end he was a victim of his own success. As the world embraced sexual and economic freedom the magazine became more mainstream and less risque. Hefner loved the magazine business but was less interested, and less skilled at running a huge corporation. This lead to a lot of bad business decisions and things almost went belly up in the 80's. Playboy Enterprises was saved when he put his daughter Christie in charge to the corporation. (One of the first female CEO's in the USA incidentally.)

Not an easy, nor short, read and probably more interesting to someone with a deep interest in socioeconomic history. The book only covers up until about 2008 with the reality TV show 'The Girls Next Door' (audience 70% female by the way). I would be interested if the author were to put out a revised edition after Hefner's passing. Tons of interesting details and facts here that really enjoyed reading, but it wasn't an edge of the seat page turner.

[dejah_thoris · Rating 3 out of 5]

All right, let me first lead off by noting that I have never read a Playboy or knew much about the business or the man behind it. (I know, strange considering all the other sex history I've studied.) So, I consider myself unbiased towards the company and its owner.

That said, this book clearly shows the importance of Hef's influence in breaking down some barriers and steadfastly preserving others. On the one hand, he was a sexual revolutionary in the 1950s-60s pushing the boundaries of traditional courtship by arguing that young people can and should enjoy each other before marriage without judgement. And he always ran a gentlemanly publication, even to its detriment when new magazines lampooning it began to flourish. But Hef himself always maintained a double standard. He could be with anyone he wanted but his partners were required to be faithful. Women could hold jobs but their positions should be complimentary to men, not compete with them. Plus, keeping his girlfriends young ensured they'd always be vulnerable to his charm until they grew old enough to know better.

The book covers both Hef's life and the Playboy company, which are obviously intertwined. I kind of found myself liking the young, ambitious Hef, who loved drawing his life in comic strips and wanted to bring the world a new, more relaxed sexuality. But after his heart was broken by his former wife, the double standard cemented and I couldn't tolerate some of his opinions, especially when he considers himself such a pioneer.

Overall, I found this book a bit choppy. It's mostly in chronological order but each chapter is devoted to a particular person, place, or topic, so there's a lot of overlap. And Hef's parade of girlfriends is starting to seem sad after two marriages. Not that I can blame him for living his life to its hedonistic fullest but I also think he might've missed something in this lifetime by not staying settled down.

I would've also liked more coverage of Christie Hefner who I hope will get her own biography sometime soon.

[Kate Boisvert · Rating 2 out of 5]

After spending a week on this book, I had made it only halfway through and I couldn’t stomach anymore. I read this book in an effort to understand Hugh Hefner and the entire Playboy establishment and culture. I get it, but I found Hefner to be so disgusting that I had to put it down.

[Renee · Rating 3 out of 5]

I agree with the previous reviews about the book being too long/wordy. However there were parts of the book I enjoyed. I liked the pictures at the end especially the one of Hugh pushing his daughter in the swing. I was sad to read that his first marriage did not work out and that he wasn’t there for his kids. I thought the mother did the right thing by telling the kids that he loved them but he just wasn’t around more. I would have liked more information about the kids, about how they felt about their dad, and about what they were like. I knew little about Hugh Hefner until reading the book. I thought it was interesting that he was voted most likely to succeed in high school. I wish that he could have been more of a family person. I thought it was interesting about reading about his childhood and about what his parents were like. I sensed that he rebelled against his parents and maybe that was why he wasn’t more involved with his family. I was somewhat sympathetic that he struggled with marriage. He wasn’t able to stay happily married. I wondered why girls seemed to be so interested in him as far as what led to his popularity. He had many friends and girlfriends and I wondered what it was that drew people to him. In a way I thought it was somewhat nice for him and his friends that they mentioned they were so close. Relationships seemed to be important to Hugh which I liked. I think there could have more details about that. I personally did not agree with his liberal worldly lifestyle. I wish that he could have made his first marriage work and been there more for his kids. I didn’t understand in some ways why he remarried someone who was so different than him and chose to have more kids with her when he already had two kids/another previous family that did not work out for him. I also would have liked more detail about why he decided to publish a magazine and why pornography. I think the book gave some ideas by his interest in comics and art in high school. Also he wrote a thesis about relationships so that seemed important to him. Also he was probably interested in making much money from it. I never knew that about his friends and never knew before reading that he was close friends with Shel Silverston which I thought was interesting. I didn’t know either that they went clubbing together. I also didn’t know that Hugh was interested in playing games/being competitive. I didn’t know that he was terrified of hospitals or that the first playmate was Marilyn Monroe. I thought the book was not a bad read especially since I learned a lot about Hugh Hefner that I never knew.

[Erik · Rating 4 out of 5]

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. 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. 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?

In Mr. Playboy, historian and biographer Steven Watts argues that, in the process of becoming fabulously wealthy and famous, Hefner has profoundly altered American life and values. 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.

He reveals that Hefner, from the beginning, believed he could overturn social norms and take America with him.This fascinating portrait illustrates four ways in which Hefner and Playboy stood at the center of several cultural upheavals that remade the postwar United States. The publisher played a crucial role in the sexual revolution that upended traditional notions of behavior and expectation regarding sex. He emerged as one of the most influential advocates of a rapidly developing consumer culture, flooding Playboy readers with images of material abundance and a leisurely lifestyle. 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. Ironically, Hefner also became a controversial force in the movement for women's rights.

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.Throughout, Watts offers singular insights into the real man behind the flamboyant public persona. 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.

Punctuated throughout with descriptions and anecdotes of life at the Playboy Mansions, Mr. Playboy 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.

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was inspired to read this book when I read this article about the demise of Playboy and the fact that the Spring 2020 issue will be its last.

http://www.chicagomag.com/city-life/M...

Wow. I thought I knew a decent amount of the story of Hugh Hefner but boy was I wrong. Largely a book about Playboy moreso than a pure biography, though it's pretty much impossible to separate the man from the magazine. From the first issues and near instant success of the early 1950s through the turbulent 1960s sexual revolution and women's liberation movement, to the 1970s Decade of Me and peak of popularity, to the near-complete teardown of the empire in the Reaganite reactionism of the 1980s and neotraditionalism of the 1990s and eventual resurgence of the early 2000s, Watts paints an extremely vivid and three-dimensional picture of a very complex man. Most assuredly a man ahead of his time in the 50s, arguably already out of sync with societal pressures by the mid 60s, Mr. Playboy takes you through Hefner's wild swings between monogamy and marriage to full-on hedonistic group sex one would expect from a man 50 years his junior (and certainly the women in his life tended to stay in the under-25 category, even has he was pushing 80).

It's easy to dismiss Playboy as smut, and Hefner a peddler of pornography, but that misses the larger influence he had on the cultural norms and really what the magazine was truly about: a man's periodical which featured the latest trends in restaurants, cars, movies, music, and politics. Watts points out that well into the 1960s, married couples depicted on television slept in separate beds, and both feet firmly planted on the ground during kissing scenes. Hugh almost singlehandedly shifted the paradigm. He is often referred to as the Walt Disney of sex, and I think the comparison is apt.

I personally never read a Playboy, as I was too young to do much other than to gawk at boobs (I was 8-13 when I had access to it), but it's really interesting to discover just how many great authors and editors contributed to fantastic journalism in the book, such as Tom Wolfe and Hunter S. Thompson. I almost want to find a collection of the 1960s-1970s issues to read the articles. Yes really.

[Author Jenn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Copyright 2009, this is not a start to finish on the life of Hugh Hefner and Playboy Enterprises. This goes thru the life of Hugh Hefner and Playboy Enterprises, Start to the beginning of "The Girls Next Door". This book has lots of good factual information when it comes to the history of Playboy Enterprises, but I feel it leaves lots of information out in regard to Hugh Hefner. I have read lots of books and watched many documentaries on Hugh and life at the Playboy Mansion, there wasn't the full story here. In saying that when this book was published Hugh was still alive and could control the narrative of his life story. Still great historical facts on Playboy Enterprises itself. Great facts but hard to listen to as an audio book. 1. the time line jumped around. 2. interesting and boring all at the same time. 3. the audio book is 19hrs long! It took me almost 3 months to finish it! That being said it is still an overall good book of historical facts on Playboy Enterprises and some on Mr. Hefner himself. But, I would not rely solely on this book to educate yourself on Playboy and Hugh Hefner. I encourage you to read books by the ex bunnies and girlfriends as well. Happy Reading!

[Daniel · Rating 4 out of 5]

I first read the hardcover edition of Mr. Playboy in 2015. Then I decided I wanted to read the book again but, the book is over 400 pages so I decided to listen to the book. I listened to some of the book them stopped listening to it. Then this year I started from the beginning and listened to the whole book again.

I think the book gave me a good idea of what Hugh Hefner and his life was like. My favorite parts of the book were about the relationships between Hugh Hefner and his girlfriends or wives.

One thing that I though was interesting that Hugh Hefner had a pilots license.

So I think Mr. Playboy does a good Job of covering Hugh Hefner the man and the magazine he created and now after listening to the book I realized I had forgotten most of what I read in the book about 10 years ago. I don't know what else I want to write about the book so I am ending my review here.

[kleinerpanda_ · Rating 3 out of 5]

Das Buch Mr. Playboy beschreibt das Leben von Hugh Hefner.
Ich möchte mit dieser Rezension nicht sein Leben bewerten, sondern wie das Buch geschrieben ist.
Die Kapitel sind meiner Meinung nach unausgewogen. Ich hatte das Gefühl, sehr detailliert über seine jungen Jahre informiert zu werden während seine späteren Lebensabschnitte vergleichsweise knapp ausfallen. Außerdem gibt es einige Längen und Wiederholungen, die meiner Meinung nach redundant waren.
Die Struktur einzelner Storylines finde ich gewöhnungsbedürftig. Es wird zuerst erzählt, wie eine Geschichte ausgeht und dann erst, wie es dazu kam.
Auch finde ich es schade, dass einige Partnerinnen und deren gemeinsame Zeit sehr ausführlich beschrieben werden, andere jedoch nicht einmal namentlich erwähnt werden.

Ich kann das Buch Menschen empfehlen, die an den politischen Dimensionen rund um Playboy interessiert sind, weil diese gefühlt mehr Raum einnehmen als Hefners Privatleben.

[Emmanuel B · Rating 4 out of 5]

Despite what you may think of Hugh's legacy, I found this book to be very interesting. Unfortunately, Mr. Hugh's rise to fame and fortune was before my time, as a man I am obviously aware of what Playboy is and was. However, I had no idea who the man behind the iconic bunny really was.

I'm sure there was probably some inaccuracies but learning who the real Hugh was and the personal struggles he lived through onto the eventual fantasy lifestyle he created, was quite eye-opening. Plus it was fun to see how the Playboy empire played out through some of America's most historical movements. Quite a big book but worth the read if you love history and autobiographies.

[Daniel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hugh Hefner's bio is an interesting story about the life and ambitions of a young man who is trying to change the world with breaking the norms of a conservative society in the second half of the last century.
As a child of the 90s, I can only imagine what shock must be caused by Playboy's first issue with naked Marilyn Monroe on the front cover in 1953. Over the years I rarely had given meaning to this magazine and in most cases I had taken it for granted without realizing the influence and the historical meaning that it has on the so-called sexual revolution that formed in the 1960s.

[Chris · Rating 4 out of 5]

An excellent book about Hugh Hefner and his life. He started in school by making comic books, and dreamed of working for Esquire Magazine, which did come to pass, but was disappointed when they wouldn't give him a $5.00 raise, so he quit. He started Playboy in December of 1953, with Marilyn Monroe on the cover. He has had one amazing life.

[Melissa · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very interesting book about the duality of Playboy. Where in one breath Playboy did all these great innovative things when it comes to sexuality and racism, it also takes a step backward in other social aspects. I enjoyed the last line of the book: "What we think about Hugh Hefner is what we think about ourselves."

[Jeff · Rating 5 out of 5]

An interesting book, that's not only a biography of Hugh Hefner, but also a history of Playboy magazine and the effect it's had on the culture of the United States over the fifty plus years of its existence.

If I'd known just how well-written and interesting this book would be, I would have gotten to it much sooner.

[Jacinda · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm quite conflicted by this book, mostly from the feminist empowerment/objectification standpoint. There was a lot of interesting history throughout the book but also a bit of skeeziness which lowers the rating for me.

[ZaQue Hutchings · Rating 5 out of 5]

So much respect for what the magazine stands for and its derivation!

[Alexander · Rating 5 out of 5]

Luminary brilliance. Chapter 13.

[? · Rating 5 out of 5]

Primal desire

[Kaeli · Rating 4 out of 5]

four stars because of how well written and researched this was, hef wasn’t a good person but it was a really interesting book.

[Igor · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have found not fair the rating 3.6. Too low.

Maybe because I am from Brazil, but I found the but quite interesting and ample in scope.

[Jeffner · Rating 2 out of 5]

Pretty boring. Lots of name dropping.

[AdorablyFeral.Reads]

This book was part of a research paper back when I was in college getting my BA. I was taking a Womens Studies class at the time.