John Dante's Inferno a Playboy's Life

The life of one of the Great Lovers of all time John Dante lived the life of a bachelors 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.Critics are saying: Anthony Valerios biography of John Dante Hugh Hefners second-in-command at *Playboy* and the Great Libertines best friend for over 40 years is like no other book I have read. Deft and clever literate and highly readable. Parading through these pages are some of the best-known names in show business and its darker side--especially for a magazine self-identified as mens entertainment-- pornography: Beatty Bogdanovich Caan Cosby Curtis Jagger Lovelace Nicholson Reems Steinem and especially Silverstein. Readers will be riveted by the portrait of the beloved childrens author that emerges in these pages. Not exactly what they may have expected. Silverstein urged John Dante to contact Valerio whom Silverstein knew and whose work he respected so that John Dante could write a book--the insiders view of *Playboy*!--that would earn him enough money to get him to Florence the town that exiled his namesake the poet Dante Alighieri close to 700 years earlier. The 20th-century (John) Dante gets to Florence all right but the price is steep indeed. Its not exactly *Se7en * but it has its dark seamy *nasty* side. Think *Star 80*.Valerio writes surely and gives us gripping and very very literate prose. It seems completely appropriate that the readers of *John Dantes Inferno* be brought into the presence of the Great Libertines of western culture which include surely Casanova and Hugh Hefner. Read it. And enjoy.