David Peters was the October 1982 Playgirl centerfold. Featuring Tom Selleck on the cover, it was the bestselling issue at that time. This is David's true life story. Many photos included. David grew up in a small city on San Francisco Bay after surviving physical and emotional abuse in his early years by an alcoholic father. Baseball became a big part of his early years building his confidence and ushering in his burgeoning physical nature. A foray to Fort Lauderdale as a teenager brought him face to face with his emerging wild side in ways he couldn't have imagined and began a decades-long coming out as a sexual being. In his search for confidence, sex, and adventure, David stumbled into modeling, strip dancing, and the world of gyms. Continually seeking inner peace, he was drawn to Buddhism, meditation, vegetarianism, ganja and other mind-altering substances, all the while searching for love and finding it difficult to reconcile his quiet, introspective side with his just-say-yes pleasure junkie lifestyle. If you think someone who poses nude for an international magazine might be a little bit twisted, you just might be right. Read this one of a kind story!

How those with the power to design technology, in the very moment of design, are allowed to imagine who is included--and who is excluded--in the future. Our world is built on an array of standards we are compelled to share. In Proxies, Dylan Mulvin examines how we arrive at those standards, asking, "To whom and to what do we delegate the power to stand in for the world?" Mulvin shows how those with the power to design technology, in the very moment of design, are allowed to imagine who is included--and who is excluded--in the future. For designers of technology, some bits of the world end up standing in for other bits, standards with which they build and calibrate. These "proxies" carry specific values, even as they disappear from view. Mulvin explores the ways technologies, standards, and infrastructures inescapably reflect the cultural milieus of their bureaucratic homes. Drawing on archival research, he investigates some of the basic building-blocks of our shared infrastructures. He tells the history of technology through the labor and communal practices of, among others, the people who clean kilograms to make the metric system run, the women who pose as test images, and the actors who embody disease and disability for medical students. Each case maps the ways standards and infrastructure rely on prototypical ideas of whiteness, able-bodiedness, and purity to control and contain the messiness of reality. Standards and infrastructures, Mulvin argues, shape and distort the possibilities of representation, the meaning of difference, and the levers of change and social justice.

A devoted reader of autobiographies and memoirs, Roger J. Porter has observed in recent years a surprising number of memoirs by adult children whose fathers have led secret lives. Some of the fathers had second families; some had secret religious lives; others have been criminals, liars, or con men. Struck by the intensely human drama of secrecy and deception played out for all to see, Porter explores the phenomenon in great depth. In Bureau of Missing Persons he examines a large number of these works—eighteen in all—placing them in a wide literary and cultural context and considering the ethical quandaries writers face when they reveal secrets so long and closely held. Among the books Porter treats are Paul Auster’s The Invention of Solitude, Alison Bechdel’s graphic memoir Fun Home, Essie Mae Washington-Williams’s Dear Senator (on her father, Strom Thurmond), Bliss Broyard’s One Drop, Mary Gordon’s The Shadow Man, and Geoffrey Wolff’s The Duke of Deception. He also discusses Nathaniel Kahn’s documentary film, My Architect. These narratives inevitably look inward to the writer as well as outward to the parent. The autobiographical children are compelled, if not consumed, by a desire to know. They become detectives, piecing together clues to fill memory voids, assembling material and archival evidence, public and private documents, letters, photographs, and iconic physical objects to track down the parent.

Asking if the political requirements of gay pride have repressed discussion of the more uncomfortable or undignified aspects of homosexuality, 'Gay Shame' seeks to lift this unofficial ban on the investigation of homosexuality and shame by presenting critical work from the most vibrant frontier in contemporary queer studies.

A colorfully illustrated biography of a little French boy who would become an internationally known oceanographer and champion of the seas. Once upon a time in France, a baby was born under the summer sun. His parents named him Jacques. As he grew, Jacques fell in love with the sea. He dreamed of breathing beneath the waves and swimming as gracefully as a fish. In fact, he longed to become a manfish. Jacques Cousteau grew up to become a champion of the seas and one of the best-known oceanographers in the world. In this lovely biography, poetic text and gorgeous paintings come together to create a portrait of Cousteau that is as magical as it is inspiring. Praise for Manfish “Berne offers a luminous picture-book biography about Jacques Cousteau . . . . Puybaret’s smooth-looking acrylic paintings extend the words’ elegant simplicity and beautifully convey the sense of infinite, underwater space.” —Booklist (starred review) “This moving tribute to the great nautical observer and filmmaker is shot through with an authentically childlike sense of adventure and the thrill of discovery . . . . This poetic profile of a doer and a dreamer is certain to inspire fresh interest in discovering, and in caring for, our world’s wonders.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review) “A new generation of children is introduced to the pioneering oceanographer and filmmaker. Beginning with Cousteau’s childhood in France where he marveled at the sea and dreamed of breathing underwater, Berne reveals the unique mix of curiosity, ingenuity, and passion that drove Cousteau to make underwater exploration possible.” —School Library Journal

When helicopter pilot, Captain Annie O'Donnell, makes a split second decision that nearly kills Special Forces operative, Tom Foley, she feels obliged to stay behind in a war zone and nurse him back to health. As civil war erupts around them and the Blackjacks arrive, the situation goes from bad to worse. Separated by rank, responsibility, and duty, they desperately fight their sizzling attraction. But as time runs out on them and the enemy closes in, their lives and love are on the line.

In I’m Fine, But You Appear to Be Sinking the strange and the mundane collide. These are stories of strange experiences set in familiar places, and of familiar experiences set in strange places. Many of the pieces in I’m Fine take place close to home, in suburban neighborhoods, or rural communities. The settings are conventional, yet something unexpected, or even magical, is occurring. In one piece, a couple speculates about random objects that appear without reason in their backyard. In another, neighbors try to figure out if a local meth dealer is keeping a live tiger captive on his property. In other pieces, it’s the setting that’s fantastical, but the characters’ reactions that remain ordinary, like in the titular story where a journalist lost at sea and hunted by a mythical ocean creature admits to struggling with loneliness and isolation in much the same way he does even when he’s safe at home. Although they are not directly linked by any specific character, the pieces in this collection are bound through reoccurring imagery and a shared theme of protagonists in emotional peril. There are unexpected appearances and disappearances, movement of inanimate objects, the search for something lost, the finding of something unusual. There are prophesies, dreams, unidentifiable creatures, and environmental catastrophes on a scale both large and small. There are action figures and octopuses, sullen teenagers and missing cats. At their core, these stories are imbued with mystery, oddity, humor, and empathy. They each stand on their own, but mean considerably more when read together.

Playboy Playmate Carrie Stevens broke all the rules. She did everything "nice girls" are not supposed to do. While not unscathed, she is still standing. Her story is more than that of survival, it is a quest for what matters most in life.

Following the remarkable success of the 50th year anniversary edition, we're pleased to present Playboy: Centerfolds, 60th Anniversary Edition. The content remains the same—every Centerfold from every issue. That's over 600 beauties with additional Centerfolds through the present to make this Playboy's most complete photographic volume to date. Hefner introduces the book and literary luminaries including Paul Theroux, Jay McInerney, and Daphne Merkin comment on the social mores and cultural climate of each decade. This chronological collection provides an unparalleled view of our evolving appreciation of the female form: from the fifties fantasy of voluptuous blondes to the tawny beach girls of the seventies to the groomed and toned women of today. Playboy: Centerfolds, 60th Anniversary Edition is a breathtaking tour de force.