Playboy celebrates its 50th anniversary with this lavish collection of the very best of the magazine s photography.

More than 250 full-color photographs, chosen from the ten million images preserved in the Playboy archive, chronicle five decades of brilliant, life-affirming art.

Playboy: 50 Years revisits the girl next door, the sex symbols, and the gods and goddesses who shaped our culture. It visually tracks the changing politics, fashions, and mores through the frenzied peak of the sexual revolution and beyond - from the almost nostalgic eroticism of the 50s bachelor, a martini his secret of seduction, to the highly charged images of modern sexuality. Celebrity models such as Raquel Welch and Cindy Crawford, along with interview subjects such as Mohammed Ali and Salvador Dali, and infamous bunnies such as Anna Nicole Smith and Pamela Anderson reveal all.

Portfolios devoted to the bachelor pad, the perfect cocktail, fashion, and sports cars celebrate Playboy as the ultimate wish book. From the history-making red velvet shot of Marilyn Monroe, posed with nothing on except the radio,to the highly charged images of such masters as Herb Ritts and Helmut Newton, this book is a breath-taking photographic tour de force.

The definitive gift of the season, Playboy: 50 Years is also the only book being published in the fall to coincide with the launch of the magazine s 50th anniversary.