MR. PLAYBOY Hugh Hefner and the American Dream

Few have colored the cultural palette more than Hugh Hefner. The sexual titillation he introduced with PLAYBOY magazine in the fifties now permeates society. In fact, in a culture in which porn-on-demand is a rite of passage. Hef's innovations seem tame. But it wasn't always that way—from his Midwestern Quaker roots to his vast empire in Chicago—which made the whole concept of "lifestyle" a birthright to affluent and upwardly mobile young Americans—Hefner has always courted controversy. Steven Watts's biography presents a more complex personality lurking behind the pipe and smoking jacket, and Ray Porter's courtly manner suggests indignation, and near envy, over Hefner's excesses. The tension is well suited to the tangled web of contradictions that Hefner embodies. J.S.H. © AudioFile 2009, Portland, Maine [Published: MARCH 2009]