Download or read book John Dante s Inferno a Playboy s Life written by Anthony Valerio and published by . This book was released on 2012-09-01 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The life of one of the Great Lovers of all time, John Dante lived the life of a bachelor's fantasy, going from his humble beginnings in a small Italian village to the Playboy Mansion, where he lived for 26 years with Hugh Hefner and 40 of the most beautiful women in the world. John Dante was a key figure in the first years of the Playboy empire, hiring Bunnies, training Bunny Mothers, and managing the Playboy jet. He befriended some of the most popular and important figures of our time, including Hugh Hefner, whom John paints as a "fascinating, complex man," as well as Shel Silverstein, Lenny Bruce, Linda Lovelace, Don Adams, James Caan and myriad other personalities and stars. A first hand, inside look. An important book from the life of the second-in-command. "This is a highly original way of telling the story of John Dante, self-made namesake of the more famous Dante. Using the medieval poet's vision of Hell as a kind of running parallel narrative, Anthony Valerio weaves a fascinating tale of ambition, excess, friendship, and rocking good times back in the day of the Playboy Clubs, replete with Bunnies, orgies, and hedonistic fun. Valerio writes with verve and compassion about men and women who ran after their dreams and their pleasures with abandon, living as if youth, potency, and beauty would never end. They did, of course, and this gives a poignant quality to the book. This is also the life story of an Italian American who came up from very humble origins to the heights of Hugh Hefner's sexy Never Never Land. I didn't always like these players' choices, and the machismo of that world is sometimes hard to take. Women are prized for their long, smooth legs, their willingness to service the men, their decorative essence, all of which is not the most admirable way of viewing women. But those were the times and those were the values that dominated Hef's universe. John Dante did have his own moral code, unusual as it was, and he was above all a good and faithful friend. Valerio is so expert at making us feel the lives of others, even those very far from our own experiences, and his colloquial style is just right. It seems that he wrote this book out of friendship, and so it is ultimately a kind, compassionate book. I am looking forward to many more tales told by the master storyteller, Anthony Valerio " Rebecca West, professor, University of Chicago

Download or read book John Dante s Inferno written by Anthony Valerio and published by Daisy H Productions LLC. This book was released on 2014-06-02 with total page 112 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Screenplay of the celebrated JOHN Dante's Inferno, about an immigrant's rise to second-in-command int he Playboy Empire. he life of one of the Great Lovers of all time, John Dante lived the life of a bachelor's fantasy, going from his humble beginnings in a small Italian village to the Playboy Mansion, where he lived for 26 years with Hugh Hefner and 40 of the most beautiful women in the world. John Dante was a key figure in the first years of the Playboy empire, hiring Bunnies, training Bunny Mothers, and managing the Playboy jet. He befriended some of the most popular and important figures of our time, including Hugh Hefner, of whom John paints as a "fascinating, complex man," as well as Shel Silverstein, Lenny Bruce, Don Adams, James Caan and myriad other personalities and stars. A first hand, inside look. An important book from the life of the second-in-command.

Download or read book Purgatorio written by Dante Alighieri and published by . This book was released on 1980 with total page 307 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Before the Sidewalk Ended written by Anthony Valerio and published by . This book was released on 2020-10-20 with total page 116 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This startling portrait of the great writer of children's books, songs and plays Shel Silverstein presents him in a rare humane light. What he was like as a man and a friend. What interested and inspired him. Some of the women in his life. The loving often hilarious relationship between Shel Silverstein & Anthony Valerio depicted in these pages entertains as much as informs. Take a ground-breaking walk beside them through Greenwich Village on a routine work day. Their stops, their conversations. Meet a Shel Silverstein Not (Only) for Kids. A university professor recently wrote: "Readers will be riveted by the portrait of the beloved children's author that emerges in these pages. Not exactly what they may have expected." Lending beauty and life to this charming memoir of an historical time and place are never before seen photos by the great graphic artist and photographer Dave Barry. About Anthony Valerio, Shel Silverstein wrote: "He knows his people. He knows his craft. He gets in, tells his story & gets out. It's what good writing should be." "Shel was one of my people. I was one of his people. This is our story."--A.V. About Anthony Valerio critics are saying: Best Sellers: "...He really knows his history and his subject very well. No less important is the fact thst he is a first-rate writer who can really tell a good story..."Los Angeles Times: "...Valerio writes with energy & a rich style and has an unusually good eye for detail....""Baltimore Sun: "...Anthony Valerio's fiction bears likeness to our best dreams, when the fantastical elements of the subconscious play themselves out in a vivid replica of reality..." Contributor NY Times Book Review & Vogue Magazine--"Anthony Valerio writes a prose like no one else's. It reminds me of nothing so much as Chaplan's walk: the funny dignity, the sly humility, the fastidious pathos." "Gripping, Literate, Naughty, Bawdy"

Download or read book The Aran Islands written by John Millington Synge and published by . This book was released on 1907 with total page 234 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Publisher's prospectus for the limited edition (150 copies), large paper edition of Synge's work. The only book published by Maunsel to include hand-colouring of an artist's work.

Download or read book The History of Hell written by Alice K. Turner and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. This book was released on 1993 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A survey of how, over the past 4,000 years, religious leaders, poets, painters, and ordinary people have visualized Hell--its location, architecture, furnishings, purpose, and inhabitants.

Download or read book Elizabeth s Wolf written by Lora Leigh and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2018-01-02 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From New York Times bestselling author Lora Leigh comes a new, revised edition of a beloved classic in the passionate Breed series—Elizabeth’s Wolf won the hearts of readers everywhere when it was first released, and now experience the magic again in this special, expanded edition! Special-Forces solider Dash has all but given up his will to live until an innocent letter from a little girl brings him back to life. Cassie writes to him every week, strengthening his resolve to recover from the devastating loss of his unit. But when the letters suddenly stop arriving, Dash instinctively knows Cassie and her mother are in critical danger. Elizabeth and her daughter are on the run from a dark and bloody past that refuses to let them go. The stakes are too high for her to fall for this dangerous man who’s just walked into her life, but now more than ever she needs help. Saving his mate and her daughter calls Dash’s beast to the forefront and transforms the lone wolf into an alpha protector—he becomes Elizabeth’s wolf.

Download or read book Chaucer s Dante written by Richard Neuse and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2023-11-10 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Richard Neuse here explores the relationship between two great medieval epics, Dante's Divine Comedy and Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. He argues that Dante's attraction for Chaucer lay not so much in the spiritual dimension of the Divine Comedy as in the human. Borrowing Bertolt Brecht's phrase "epic theater," Neuse underscores the interest of both poets in presenting, as on a stage, flesh and blood characters in which readers would recognize the authors as well as themselves. As spiritual autobiography, both poems challenge the traditional medieval mode of allegory, with its tendency to separate body and soul, matter and spirit. Thus Neuse demonstrates that Chaucer and Dante embody a humanism not generally attributed to the fourteenth century. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1991.

Download or read book The Gambler written by Fyodor Dostoyevsky and published by . This book was released on 1923 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Playground written by Jennifer Saginor and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2009-03-17 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the vein of Running with Scissors, Playground is the glitzy, glamorous, and surreal true story of a young girl who grew up inside the Playboy Mansion and never learned where the party stopped and the real world began. You are six years old. Every day after school your father takes you to a sprawling castle filled with exotic animals, bowls of candy, and half-naked women catering to your every need. You have your own room. You have new friends. You have an uncle Hef who's always there for you. Welcome to the world of Playground, the true story Jennifer Saginor who grew up inside the Playboy Mansion. By the time she was fourteen, she'd done countless drugs, had a secret affair with Hef's girlfriend, and was already losing her grip on reality. Schoolwork, family, and "ordinary people" had no meaning behind the iron gates of the Mansion, where celebrities frolicked, pool parties abounded, and her own father—Hugh Hefner's personal physician and best friend, the man nicknamed "Dr. Feel Good"—typically held court. Every day was a party, every night was an adventure, and through it all was a young girl falling faster and faster down the rabbit hole—trying desperately hard not to get lost.

Download or read book The Penguin Book of Hell written by Scott G. Bruce and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2018-09-04 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "From the Bible through Dante and up to Treblinka and Guantánamo Bay, here is a rich source for nightmares." --The New York Times Book Review Three thousand years of visions of Hell, from the ancient Near East to modern America A Penguin Classic From the Hebrew Bible's shadowy realm of Sheol to twenty-first-century visions of Hell on earth, The Penguin Book of Hell takes us through three thousand years of eternal damnation. Along the way, you'll take a ferry ride with Aeneas to Hades, across the river Acheron; meet the Devil as imagined by a twelfth-century Irish monk--a monster with a thousand giant hands; wander the nine circles of Hell in Dante's Inferno, in which gluttons, liars, heretics, murderers, and hypocrites are made to endure crime-appropriate torture; and witness the debates that raged in Victorian England when new scientific advances cast doubt on the idea of an eternal hereafter. Drawing upon religious poetry, epics, theological treatises, stories of miracles, and accounts of saints' lives, this fascinating volume of hellscapes illuminates how Hell has long haunted us, in both life and death. For more than seventy-five years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 2,000 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

Download or read book The Little Sailor written by Anthony Valerio and published by . This book was released on 2008 with total page 108 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Like most of Valerio's narrative fiction, "The Little Sailor" combines personal and popular cultural histories, resolving the logic and emotion of its protagonist's episodic memory in a linear plot.

Download or read book Closing of the American Mind written by Allan Bloom and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2008-06-30 with total page 403 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The brilliant, controversial, bestselling critique of American culture that “hits with the approximate force and effect of electroshock therapy” (The New York Times)—now featuring a new afterword by Andrew Ferguson in a twenty-fifth anniversary edition. In 1987, eminent political philosopher Allan Bloom published The Closing of the American Mind, an appraisal of contemporary America that “hits with the approximate force and effect of electroshock therapy” (The New York Times) and has not only been vindicated, but has also become more urgent today. In clear, spirited prose, Bloom argues that the social and political crises of contemporary America are part of a larger intellectual crisis: the result of a dangerous narrowing of curiosity and exploration by the university elites. Now, in this twenty-fifth anniversary edition, acclaimed author and journalist Andrew Ferguson contributes a new essay that describes why Bloom’s argument caused such a furor at publication and why our culture so deeply resists its truths today.

Download or read book The Blazing World and Other Writings written by Margaret Cavendish and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 1994-03-31 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Flamboyant, theatrical and ambitious, Margaret Cavendish was one of the seventeenth century's most striking figures: a woman who ventured into the male spheres of politics, science, philosophy and literature. The Blazing World is a highly original work: part Utopian fiction, part feminist text, it tells of a lady shipwrecked on the Blazing World where she is made Empress and uses her power to ensure that it is free of war, religious division and unfair sexual discrimination. This volume also includes The Contract, a romance in which love and law work harmoniously together, and Assaulted and Pursued Chastity, which explores the power and freedom a woman can achieve in the disguise of a man.

Download or read book Bunny Tales written by Izabella St. James and published by ReadHowYouWant.com. This book was released on 2010-09 with total page 390 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When this beach bunny caught the eye of Hugh Hefner at an L.A. nightclub, Izabella St. James was looking for a fun break from studying for the bar. As the latest Girlfriend of the Playboy founder, her ''break'' lasted two years, but life behind the gates of the Playboy Mansion was anything but fun. Sure there were parties, presents, puppies, and plastic surgery; but there was also a curfew, a strict regimen of who sits where on movie night, limited contact with the outside world, and a sex life that was anything but wild and crazy. While the E! reality show, The Girls Next Door, has been a ratings hit, each of the three Playboy Bunnies in the series has since left the Mansion in newsworthy ways: one is engaged to a football player, and Hugh's ''main'' Girlfriend has finally understood that there would be no fairy-tale marriage and family with the man she literally transformed her life for. Izabella was there to witness how each of these relationships formed, where each Girlfriend fell in the pecking - and bed - order, and when, exactly, the fabled life turned shabby and cheap. From catfights to sneaking in boyfriends, from high-profile guests in the Grotto to the bizarre rituals of the octogenarian at the center of the sexual revolution, Bunny Tales is compulsively readable and endlessly entertaining!

Download or read book The Bunny Years written by Kathryn Leigh Scott and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2011-09-27 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Scott's "The Bunny Years" is a collection of memories from women who got their start as the real Playboy Bunnies, working in Hef's clubs across the country.

Download or read book Femme Noir written by Karen Burroughs Hannsberry and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2012-10-26 with total page 1298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Though often thought of as primarily a male vehicle, the film noir offered some of the most complex female roles of any movies of the 1940s and 1950s. Stars such as Barbara Stanwyck, Gene Tierney and Joan Crawford produced some of their finest performances in noir movies, while such lesser known actresses as Peggie Castle, Hope Emerson and Helen Walker made a lasting impression with their roles in the genre. These six women and 43 others who were most frequently featured in films noirs are profiled here, focusing primarily on their work in the genre and its impact on their careers. A filmography of all noir appearances is provided for each actress.