Playboy's Hugh Hefner

Hugh Hefner, the Playboy of the Western World, was a visionary publisher, an empire-builder, an avatar of pleasure, and a pajama-clad pipe-smoker with a pre-coital grin. Although lauded by millions of avid readers, he was denounced by feminists for exploiting women, and defined as “the father of sex addiction,” “a huckster,” “a lecherous low-brow feeder of our vices,” “a misogynist,” and, near the end of his life, “a symbol of priapic senility.” This ground-breaking biography, the latest in Blood Moon’s award-winning string of outrageously unvarnished myth-busters, is the first published since Hefner’s death at the age of 91 in 2017. It is a provocative saga, rich in tantalizing, often shocking detail—not recommended for the rigidly sanctimonious or for the faint of heart.