Playboy, Mad Men, and Me-And Other Stories

In these wide-ranging stories, Julie Wosk captures the excitement of working as a promotion writer at Playboy in the days of Mad Men and the challenges of being a civil rights worker in Alabama soon after the march at Selma. Her stories conjure up America's fast-changing history, and are filled with vivid, contrasting images: a swinging party at Hugh Hefner's mansion, a sobering childhood visit to a cemetery, waiting in a church to hear Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. speak. Many of her stories are shaped by her sense of surprise and serendipity as she encounters moments of magic and chance. From Harvard to Playboy swizzle sticks to a Pulitzer-prize winner who fools her with a trick, Wosk reveals her sense of wonder as she enters into these vastly different worlds. Julie Wosk is Professor Emerita of English, art history, and studio painting at the State University of New York, Maritime College in New York City, and the author of several books including Women and the Machine: Representations From the Spinning Wheel to the Electronic Age and My Fair Ladies: Female Robots, Androids, and Other Artificial Eves.Her many articles have appeared in HuffPost, The New York Times, Technology Review, and more. She is also a photographer and painter whose work has been exhibited in American museums and galleries.