Wall Street Journal
"Playboy and the Making of the Good Life in Modern America"
by Elizabeth Fraterrigo (Amazon.com: http://xrl.us/PlayboyM
)
Don't expect backstairs gossip from the Playboy Mansion
West or glimpses of topless bunnies cavorting with Hef and
his showbiz pals in the Woo Grotto from Elizabeth
Fraterrigo's "Playboy and the Making of the Good Life in
America." Nor does the book include much detail about how
Mr. Hefner turned his skinny little Chicago slick into a
publishing colossus that, at its peak in 1972, sold more
than seven million issues a month and operated 40 Playboy
clubs, hotels and resorts, including a London casino that
was the most profitable gambling joint in the world. Mr.
Hefner's manifesto, his stupefying 25-part Playboy
Philosophy, rates barely a mention.
Instead, Prof. Fraterrigo, who teaches history at Loyola
University in Chicago, devotes herself to the chicken-and-
egg question of how much Playboy shaped mid-century
American mores and consumer taste and how much it reflected
the profound changes that convulsed the country as it
emerged from nearly 30 years of Depression and war. The
answer is simple enough: Like Harold Ross of the New
Yorker, Clay Felker of New York magazine and Helen Gurley
Brown of Cosmopolitan, Hef was a great editor whose taste
and preoccupations synched with the emerging spirit of his
time and became iconic...
Continued: http://xrl.us/PlayM
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