Bachelors and Bunnies: The Sexual Politics of Playboy

Pitzulo, assistant professor of history at the University of West Georgia, begins her history of Playboy appropriately enough with the birth of its iconic founder, Hugh Marston Hefner and his battle to escape his repressive "typically Midwestern, Methodist home." Pitzulo's narrative can feel fixated on the brand's founder, and the narrative soars when it pulls away from him to consider (and humanize) the Playmates and the Playboy milieu: the roiling political and social changes of the 1970s and the heyday of the women's liberation movement. The book's detailed portrayal of feminism as it played out in the streets, in the Playboy offices among the staff of men and women, and in the pages of the magazine itself, is the book's most compelling part. The ending, however, loses steam with a hurried conclusion that only briefly considers the past 30 years and Hef's daughter, Christie Hefner, the enigmatic woman who carried Playboy Enterprises Inc. from 1982 to 2009 as the president, chair, and, finally, CEO. Photos. (May)