Mr. Playboy: Hugh Hefner and the American Dream

As he did in his previous books on Henry Ford (The People's Tycoon ) and Walt Disney (The Magic Kingdom ), Watts carefully details the life of Hugh Hefner and the influence his Playboy magazine has had on American culture. Using unrestricted access to the magazine's archives, Watts skillfully charts the intersection of Hefner's professional and personal history: the “sexual titillation” of his first issue; his mid- to late-1960s championing of leftist politics and writers such as Norman Mailer and Kurt Vonnegut; his 1970s retrenchment after assaults by the women's liberation movement; his financial and personal troubles in the '80s and '90s; and his current position as the “retro cool” figurehead of an institution that is now a “midsize communications and entertainment company.” Watts evokes a time when Playboy was seen by its critics as a key “symptom of decadence in American life,” and is at his best when exploring his subject's early years, showing how Hefner's sexual and material “ethic of self-fulfillment” drove him to challenge “the social conventions of postwar America.” (Oct.)