The New Republic

The famous magazine writer is a paradoxical figure, because he or she is famous mainly to other magazine writers. This may have something to do with the landfill destiny of magazines themselves or, more likely, the typical length of magazine pieces. Yet again, size distressingly matters. Most famous magazine writers eventually come to terms with this and publish a book. READ MORE >>

The historian Elizabeth Fraterrigo asks us to accept a somewhat unlikely premise, which is this: A titty magazine that has been culturally irrelevant since the late 1970s was at the forefront of many of this nation’s most important social upheavals and reconfigurations. It is to her book’s credit—and, it must be said, to Playboy’s—that one closes her book largely convinced that she is right. READ MORE >>