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Watts packs in plenty of gasp-inducing passages.-\u003ci\u003eNewark Star Ledger\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eLike it or not, Hugh Hefner has affected all of us, so I treasured learning about how and why in the sober biography.-\u003ci\u003eChicago Sun Times\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThis 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. \u003ci\u003ePlayboy\u003c\/i\u003e is no longer the cultural force it used to be, but it made a stamp on society.-\u003ci\u003eAssociated Press\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn Steven Watts' exhaustive, illuminating biography \u003ci\u003eMr. Playboy\u003c\/i\u003e, 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.-\u003ci\u003eLos Angeles Times\u003c\/i\u003eGorgeous 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 \u003ci\u003eThe Girls Next Door\u003c\/i\u003e, 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 \u003ci\u003eMr. Playboy\u003c\/i\u003e, 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, \u003ci\u003eMr. Playboy\u003c\/i\u003e 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.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cul\u003e\u003cli\u003eSpans from Hefner's childhood to the launch of \u003ci\u003ePlayboy \u003c\/i\u003emagazine and the expansion of t\u003c\/li\u003e\u003c\/ul\u003e","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49571635364113,"sku":"GOR002625139","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49663055397137,"sku":"GOR003966034","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50467976741137,"sku":"CIN0471690597G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ WELL_READ \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":51683896295697,"sku":"GOR002803777","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0471690597.jpg?v=1751439905"},{"product_id":"magic-kingdom-book-steven-watts-9780826213792","title":"The Magic Kingdom","description":"Part biography and part cultural analysis, Steven Watts's The Magic Kingdom sheds new light on the cultural icon of \"\"Uncle Walt.\"\" Watts also digs deeply into Disney's private life, investigating his roles as husband, father, and brother and providing fresh insight into his peculiar psyche - his genuine folksiness and warmth, his domineering treatment of colleagues and friends, his deepest prejudices and passions. Full of colorful sketches of daily life at the Disney Studio and tales about the creation of Disneyland and Disney World, The Magic Kingdom offers a definitive view of one of the most influential Americans of the twentieth century.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49621584707857,"sku":"GOR004056206","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":49786806305041,"sku":"CIN0826213790G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50093456032017,"sku":"CIN0826213790VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0826213790.jpg?v=1751264540"},{"product_id":"self-help-messiah-book-steven-watts-9781590515020","title":"Self-help Messiah","description":"Before Oprah Winfrey, there was Dale Carnegie. 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By examining Kennedy in the context of certain books, movies, social critiques, music, and cultural discussions that framed his ascendancy, Watts shows us the excitement and sense of possibility, the optimism and aspirations, that accompanied the dawn of a new age in America.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":49866064920849,"sku":"CIN1250049989G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50763766530321,"sku":"CIN1250049989VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":51713475772689,"sku":"GOR014374481","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1250049989.jpg?v=1750986008"},{"product_id":"mr-playboy-book-steven-watts-9780470521670","title":"Mr Playboy","description":"\u003cp\u003eIn his latest work, the dean of religion and science tackles some of the thorniest issues posed by contemporary thought. Thoroughly conversant with current developments, Barbour offers astute analyses of the shape and import of evolutionary theory, indeterminacy, neuroscience, information theory, and artificial intelligence. He also addresses deeper philosophical issues and the idea of nature itself. Then with characteristic clarity and verve, Barbour advances to the interconnected religious questions at the core of contemporary debate: Are humans free? Does religion itself evolve? Are we immortal? Is God omnipotent? 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But never before has his outsized genius been brought to life so vividly as by Steven Watts in this major new biography. Watts, the author of the much acclaimed The Magic Kingdom: Walt Disney and the American Way of Life, has produced a superbly researched study of a man who was a bundle of contradictions. \u003cbr\u003eFord was the entrepreneur who first made the automobile affordable but who grew skeptical of consumerism's corrosive impact on moral values, an employer who insisted on a living wage for his workers but stridently opposed unions, who established the assembly line but worried about its effect on the work ethic, who welcomed African Americans to his company in the age of Jim Crow but was a rabid anti-Semite. He was the private man who had a warm, loving marriage while siring a son with a mistress; a father who drove his heir, Edsel, so relentlessly that it contributed to his early death; a folksy social philosopher and at one time, perhaps, the most popular figure in America, who treated his workers so harshly that they turned against him; creator of the largest, most sophisticated factory in the world who preferred spending time in his elaborate re-creation of a nineteenth-century village; and the greatest businessman of his age who haplessly lost control of his own company in his declining years. \u003cbr\u003eWatts poignantly shows us how a Michigan farm boy frommodest circumstances emerged as one of America's richest men and one of its first mass-culture celebrities, one who became a folk hero to millions of ordinary citizens because of his support of high wages and material abundance for everyday workers and yet also excited the admiration of figures as diverse as Vladimir Lenin and Adolf Hitler, John D. 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