The
Playboy Book - 50 Years - Taschen Books - By Gretchen Edgren
As
a longtime Playboy
magazine subscriber, (and as a reader long before I
was legally supposed to be,) Taschen’s The Playboy Book
– Fifty Years by Gretchen Edgren is a dream for anyone
with even the slightest interest in Playboy through the years.
People
are always debating whether or not Playboy magazine is still
relevant as a print magazine in the digital age and the answer
is not only found in the beautiful pages of the magazine every
month, but in the pages and history found in The Playboy Book
– Fifty Years.
This
book is so complete it comes with everything but your own personal
centerfold model! Even the most prudish would likely get a big
kick out of all of the changes displayed over the years in fashion,
culture and attitudes.
Playboy
is an important magazine, and has been for all of these years,
if not as a slick and intellectual form of entertainment, then
as a pioneer for freedom of speech. If it weren’t for Playboy
magazine, many of the adult entertainments we take for granted
might not exist.
The
book begins in the Fifties, and fittingly with one of America’s
most iconic sex symbols and one of Playboy’s favorite muses,
Marilyn Monroe. (Marilyn Monroe is absolutely the best choice
for kicking this book off, as those images are smolderingly
beautiful and as fresh as though we had never seen them before.)
So, yes the book is filled with pictures of beautiful women,
from Bettie Page to Brooke Burke, we are reminded of the endless
parade of beauty that has spanned the last 50 years. True fans
of Playboy know that the nude female form is only a fraction
of why the magazine is embraced by every new generation, (of
men & women alike.) Playboy is smart and stylish, ahead
of it’s time, yet retaining a lost class and elegance that
seems to have vanished upon the end of the 50’s.
Playboy
magazine has always celebrated beautiful women and why men love
them, but it also celebrates what makes men the way they are,
(without dumbing us down and making us seem like chimps, as
most modern forms of popular entertainment seem to.)
Playboy
shows why men are important and tells us why it is healthy to
embrace the male side of us that comes naturally, (without suggesting
that we go overboard.)
Taschen
and Playboy is a match made in heaven and it makes perfect sense
that these two publishing powerhouses should join forces to
celebrate a truly remarkable anniversary, (but it is the buyers
of this book who are the lucky ones.)
Taschen
not only paves new roads in publishing and entertainment, but
is classy enough to explore the other great figures in art and
history who made the world a more interesting place for us free
thinkers to enjoy.
Terry
November 2005
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