History of Men's Magazines Vol. 4

The definitive annotated and illustrated history of girlie periodicals (1960s part 2)

"Separation is great, as long as the separation is of my thighs." —Adults Only

Open your notebooks, sharpen your pencils, and get ready for a history lesson like none you've ever experienced. You're about to learn everything you could ever want to know about the world history of men's magazines—not magazines about sports, not fashion, not hunting or fishing or how to build a birdhouse in ten easy steps, but those titillating periodicals embracing the subject dearest to all heterosexual men's hearts and other body parts: the undraped female form. Former men's magazine editor Dian Hanson traces its development from 1900 to 1980 in six massive and informative volumes.

Why two volumes on the 1960s? Because when men's magazines were finally accepted on the newsstands something had to fill their old niche under the counter. On the cusp of the sixties a new breed of men's magazine emerged in Southern California. Made in smaller print-runs, aimed at more specific markets, these new magazines, called "slicks" for the thick glossy paper they were printed on, first embraced bad girls and big hair, beatniks, booze, and fetish photographers like Elmer Batters. As the decade progressed these were the first men's magazines to showcase hippy culture, and to expose all that hippy hair, years before it made its appearance on the newsstand.

Volume 4 concentrates on the emergence of California's specialty magazine industry and how it spawned the state's multi-billion dollar sex industry of today, but also includes fetish master Irving Klaw, the specialty magazines of England, and concludes with Sweden and Denmark's emergence as the new powers in European publishing.

Together with Volume 3, Volume 4 gives a complete picture of this fascinating decade of rapid social change, but also stands on its own, covering a distinctly different, more risqué side of 1960s men's magazine publishing.

Volume 4 contains over 400 full color pages of magazine covers and interiors with well-researched text profiling important publishers and artists, individual magazines, and specialty magazine categories. This hardcover volume is an instant collectable and is vital to completion of Dian Hanson's: The History of Men's Magazines six-volume set.