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Reaching for Paradise: The Playboy Vision of America By Thomas Weyr New York Times Books, 323 pp., $12.50 Somebody should write a book about this book. Thomas Weyr is one of those people (maybe the only one) who would subscribe to Playboy if the women were dressed: would, in fact, like it better. He takes the Playboy enterprise seriously: the Playboy “vision” of America. He makes for it roughly the case Socrates made for his own teaching—that far from corrupting, it imparts wisdom to youth. Of course, it depends on how you define wisdom.

Playboy, as all the world knows, began when the young Hugh Hefner, a former Esquire functionary and failed cartoonist, built a new magazine around the famous Marilyn Monroe calendar, rights to which he acquired for a measly $500. Within three years of its first issue (which appeared in 1953), Playboy had a circulation of more than 500,000; eventually it was to peak at over seven million. By now its soft-porn rivals have capitalized on the freedom Hefner made possible and have stolen much of the market. The line between the soft and hard forms is also, predictably, fading.

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Joseph Sobran

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Reaching for Paradise: The Playboy Vision of America By Thomas Weyr New York Times Books, 323 pp., $12.50 Somebody should write a book about this book. Thomas Weyr is one of those people (maybe the only one) who would subscribe to Playboy if the women were dressed: would, in fact, like it better. He takes the Playboy enterprise seriously: the Playboy “vision” of America. He makes for it roughly the case Socrates made for his own teaching—that far from corrupting, it imparts wisdom to youth. Of course, it depends on how you define wisdom.

Playboy, as all the world knows, began when the young Hugh Hefner, a former Esquire functionary and failed cartoonist, built a new magazine around the famous Marilyn Monroe calendar, rights to which he acquired for a measly $500. Within three years of its first issue (which appeared in 1953), Playboy had a circulation of more than 500,000; eventually it was to peak at over seven million. By now its soft-porn rivals have capitalized on the freedom Hefner made possible and have stolen much of the market. The line between the soft and hard forms is also, predictably, fading.