Watts packs in plenty of gasp-inducing passages."-Newark Star Ledger"Like it or not, Hugh Hefner has affected all of us, so I treasured learning about how and why in the sober biography."-Chicago Sun Times"This 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. Playboy is no longer the cultural force it used to be, but it made a stamp on society."-Associated Press"In Steven Watts' exhaustive, illuminating biography Mr. Playboy, 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."-Los Angeles TimesGorgeous 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 The Girls Next Door, 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 Mr. Playboy, 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, Mr. Playboy 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.Spans from Hefner's childhood to the launch of Playboy magazine and the expansion of t

    No other rider has won so many major competitions on so many different horses and he is as popular at Olympia and Hickstead as he is at Aachen, Geneva, Paris and Spruce Meadows. Skelton has competed in eight Olympic Games. He was part of the gold medal-winning Great Britain team at London 2012 and made history by winning the individual Olympic gold medal at Rio 2016, riding at the age of fifty-eight his beloved horse Big Star.Nick Skelton began riding at the age of eighteen months on a Welsh pony called Oxo. At the age of seventeenth in 1975, Skelton took team silver and individual gold at the Junior European Championships. He has competed many times at the European Show Jumping Championships, winning numerous medals, both individually and with the British team. In 1980 he competed in the Alternative Olympics, where he helped the British team to a silver medal. He still holds the British Show Jumping High Jump record that he set in 1978.In 2000, Skelton was forced into an early retirement after he broke his neck from a serious fall. But following an amazing recovery he came out of retirement in 2002 to compete again. Now he tells the full story of his eventful life and matchless achievements.

    Doris Christopher’s “keep it simple” approach has a lot to teach anyone who is reaching for the American Dream. Frankly, if I can’t understand a company’s business, I figure their customers must have a pretty hard time figuring it out, too.I would challenge anyone on Wall Street to take $3,000 and do what Doris Christopher has done: build a business from scratch into a world-class organization. But follow the simple steps in this book, and it just might happen. Come see me in Omaha when you’ve put together your own recipe for success; we pay cash and Bershire’s check will clear. In the meantime, read this book. Then, read it again.-- Warren Buffet from the foreword to The Pampered ChefThe Pampered Chef is Doris Christopher’s extraordinary account of how she turned an innovative concept and $3,000 investment into a business with annual sales approaching the billion-dollar mark. It is packed with real-life lessons and inspiring insights for small-business owners and aspiring entrepreneurs.In 1980 Doris Christopher, a former home economist and teacher, was itching to get back into the workforce after an eight-year hiatus as a stay-at-home mom. Drawing on her personal and professional expertise, and determined to make cooking easier and more convenient for families, she started selling high-quality kitchen tools through cooking demonstrations to groups of women in their homes. Today, the company she started in her basement, The Pampered Chef, is celebrating its twenty-fifth anniversary and has grown into a corporation with tens of thousands of independent kitchen consultants. Now owned by Berkshire Hathaway, The Pampered Chef’s Kitchen Consultants present more than a million Kitchen Shows a year, attended by more than 12 million people.THE PAMPERED CHEF is the story of the vision, energy, hard work, and chutzpah that drove Christopher and her company to the height of success. She describes her early days as a “one-woman show,” chronicles the company’s gradual expansion, its challenges and growing popularity, and the process, offers invaluable advice and sound strategies on how to found and grow a business, including:Hard learned lessons for start-up entrepreneursHow to create a business concept and set your prioritiesKnowing when to expand and when to slow growth so that demand doesn’t overwhelm your operations or suppliesHow to counter the naysayers and deal with adversityToday, as at the company’s founding, achieving a better balance between work and family remains central to The Pampered Chef’s mission. THE PAMPERED CHEF brings Christopher’s recipe for success to women, and men, everywhere.

    And when that power is harnessed to create new communities, technologies, businesses or charities, the results can be absolutely stunning. In this book, Alexis will share his ideas, tips and even his own doodles about harnessing the power of the web for good, and along the way, he will share his philosophy with young entrepreneurs all over the globe. At 29, Ohanian has come to personify the dorm-room tech entrepreneur, changing the world without asking permission. Within a couple of years of graduating from the University of Virginia, Ohanian did just that, selling reddit for millions of dollars. He's gone on to start many other companies, like hipmunk and breadpig, all while representing Y Combinator and investing in over sixty other tech startups. Without Their Permission is his personal guidebook as to how other aspiring entrepreneurs can follow in his footsteps.

    Michael Straczynski has been one of the most successful writers in Hollywood, one of the few to forge multiple careers in movies, television and comics. Yet there’s one story he’s never told before: his own.In this dazzling memoir, the acclaimed writer behind Babylon 5, Sense8, Clint Eastwood’s Changeling and Marvel’s Thor reveals how the power of creativity and imagination enabled him to overcome the horrors of his youth and a dysfunctional family haunted by madness, murder and a terrible secret.Joe's early life nearly defies belief. Raised by damaged adults—a con-man grandfather and a manipulative grandmother, a violent, drunken father and a mother who was repeatedly institutionalized—Joe grew up in abject poverty, living in slums and projects when not on the road, crisscrossing the country in his father’s desperate attempts to escape the consequences of his past. To survive his abusive environment Joe found refuge in his beloved comics and his dreams, immersing himself in imaginary worlds populated by superheroes whose amazing powers allowed them to overcome any adversity. The deeper he read, the more he came to realize that he, too, had a superpower: the ability to tell stories and make everything come out the way he wanted it. But even as he found success, he could not escape a dark and shocking secret that hung over his family’s past, a violent truth that he uncovered over the course of decades involving mass murder.Straczynski’s personal history has always been shrouded in mystery. Becoming Superman lays bare the facts of his life: a story of creation and darkness, hope and success, a larger-than-life villain and a little boy who became the hero of his own life. It is also a compelling behind-the-scenes look at some of the most successful TV series and movies recognized around the world.Featuring an introduction by Neil Gaiman.

    Read on your PC, Mac, smart phone, tablet or Kindle device. This book is devoted to America's best actor and best comedian. Robin Williams was a celebrated actor and comedian. Robin McLaughlin Williams was born in Chicago, Illinois, July 21, 1951; he received the prestigious degree at the Juilliard School of Music and Performing Arts in New York. Williams received his first Golden Globe nomination a Soviet Russian circus performer in the comedy Moscow on the Hudson, and eventually was nominated for an Oscar for best actor award three times, and won an Oscar as Best Supporting Actor. He also won five Grammy Awards, four Golden Globes, two Emmy Awards and two Screen Actors Guild Awards. Williams not only be seen in the critically acclaimed film, and at the box office, hook, Dead Poets Society, Mrs. Doubtfire, Jumanji, Night at the Museum, as well as the animated film Happy Feet and Aladdin. Many in the entertainment industry was impressed with Williams to a variety of roles, such as turning ability, his infectious energy and versatility improvisation inspired many stand-up comedian. At the age of 63, Williams was found dead at his home in Paradise Island, California August 11, 2014. Tags: Robin Williams

    He reveals for the first time the details of the family's vast political network, which gave it access to and influence over many of the greatest statesmen of the age. And he tells a family saga, tracing the importance of unity and the profound role of Judaism in the lives of a dynasty that rose from the confines of the Frankfurt ghetto and later used its influence to assist oppressed Jews throughout Europe. A definitive work of impeccable scholarship with a thoroughly engaging narrative, 'The House of Rothschild' is a biography of the rarest kind, in which mysterious and fascinating historical figures finally spring to life.

    Fischer Black and the Revolutionary Idea of Finance explores Black's intellectual journey from Harvard to the offices of ADL, from the University of Chicago to MIT, and then to Goldman Sachs. This poignant book tells the story of one man's intellectual adventure at the very center of modern finance, fully describing the birth of quantitative finance and financial engineering along the way.Years of research and interviews with Black's business and academic associates, as well as family and friends, are distilled into a scholarly yet personal story of the formation and development of the extraordinary mind and unique character of this unassuming renegade Black deciphered the universe of modern finance in ways that went underappreciated for many years and would have won the Nobel Prize in Economics, if not for his untimely death in 1995 Author Perry Mehrling weaves Black's personal story with the birth of modern finance into a vignette-based business biography that captures the essence of this extraordinary man, explaining, for the first time, the ground-breaking impact Fischer Black had on the worlds of money and finance as well as world markets This compelling biography of the "Einstein of Finance" follows Fischer Black through his incredible career, from his transition from academia to one of the most elite of firms on Wall Street--Goldman Sachs--where he developed quantitative models that tens of thousands of professionals still use today. Fischer Black and the Revolutionary Idea of Finance demystifies this genius of finance and provides an engaging and entertaining look at a man whose life's work encapsulates modern financial theory.

    Some of his tales will seem far fetched, unless you're a cop and then you know that anything can happen - and just when you think you've seen it all, someone will surprise you.

    Late fees were ubiquitous, video-streaming unheard was of, and widespread DVD adoption seemed about as imminent as flying cars. Indeed, these were the widely accepted laws of the land in 1997, when Marc Randolph had an idea. It was a simple thought—leveraging the internet to rent movies—and was just one of many more and far worse proposals, like personalized baseball bats and a shampoo delivery service, that Randolph would pitch to his business partner, Reed Hastings, on their commute to work each morning.But Hastings was intrigued, and the pair—with Hastings as the primary investor and Randolph as the CEO—founded a company. Now with over 150 million subscribers, Netflix's triumph feels inevitable, but the twenty first century's most disruptive start up began with few believers and calamity at every turn. From having to pitch his own mother on being an early investor, to the motel conference room that served as a first office, to server crashes on launch day, to the now-infamous meeting when Netflix brass pitched Blockbuster to acquire them, Marc Randolph's transformational journey exemplifies how anyone with grit, gut instincts, and determination can change the world—even with an idea that many think will never work.What emerges, though, isn't just the inside story of one of the world's most iconic companies. Full of counter-intuitive concepts and written in binge-worthy prose, it answers some of our most fundamental questions about taking that leap of faith in business or in life: How do you begin? How do you weather disappointment and failure? How do you deal with success? What even is success?From idea generation to team building to knowing when it's time to let go, That Will Never Work is not only the ultimate follow-your-dreams parable, but also one of the most dramatic and insightful entrepreneurial stories of our time.

    That’s the breakthrough message of TOMS’ One for One movement. You don’t have to be rich to give back and you don’t have to retire to spend every day doing what you love. You can find profit, passion, and meaning all at once—right now.    In Start Something That Matters, Blake Mycoskie tells the story of TOMS, one of the fastest-growing shoe companies in the world, and combines it with lessons learned from such other innovative organizations such as Method Products, charity: water, FEED Projects, and TerraCycle. Blake presents the six simple keys for creating or transforming your own life and business, from discovering your core story to being resourceful without resources; from overcoming fear and doubt to incorporating giving into every aspect of your life. No matter what kind of change you’re considering, Start Something That Matters gives you the stories, ideas, and practical tips that can help you get started.   Why this book is for you:  • You’re ready to make a difference in the world—through your own start-up business, a nonprofit organization, or a new project that you create within your current job.• You want to love your work, work for what you love, and have a positive impact on the world—all at the same time.• You’re inspired by charity: water, method, and FEED Projects and want to learn how these organizations got their start. • You’re curious about how someone who never made a pair of shoes, attended fashion school, or worked in retail created one of the fastest-growing footwear companies in the world by giving shoes away.• You’re looking for a new model of success to share with your children, students, co-workers, and members of your community. You’re ready to start something that matters.

    Considered a prodigy in scientific research, he surprised everyone and himself by setting his sights on the competitive world of high finance. Yet no sooner had he landed an entry-level position at a prestigious firm than Gardner found himself caught in a web of incredibly challenging circumstances that left him as part of the city's working homeless and with a toddler son. Motivated by the promise he made to himself as a fatherless child to never abandon his own children, the two spent almost a year moving among shelters, "HO-tels," soup lines, and even sleeping in the public restroom of a subway station.Never giving in to despair, Gardner made an astonishing transformation from being part of the city's invisible poor to being a powerful player in its financial district.More than a memoir of Gardner's financial success, this is the story of a man who breaks his own family's cycle of men abandoning their children. Mythic, triumphant, and unstintingly honest, The Pursuit of Happyness conjures heroes like Horatio Alger and Antwone Fisher, and appeals to the very essence of the American Dream.

    Learn how to reshape your approach to branding, advertising, social media, networking and more—ultimately, making more money, while spending less.

    Winning! tells the story of the remarkable past six years - an unforgettable journey that began in September 1997 and took the team from the lower ranks of international first-class rugby to the top as World Cup Champions. Sir Clive Woodward and his team mounted a campaign of vast change, great learning, team building and clear vision to achieve their aim. 'We would question everything, change anything and leave no stone unturned, ' he writes. WINNING! will talk about the team's journey of innovation and discovery and will reveal exactly how it happened, the fundamentals of their success and how these principles can be applied to any human endeavour. 'We changed the way we coached, the way we played and, of equal importance, how we operated off the field.' Bringing his business management skills to the game, Woodward simplified the entire approach to the structure of the team and created new management systems both on and off the pitch. describes the thrilling build-up to England's World Cup triumph