Living Loaded: Tales of Sex, Salvation, and the Pursuit of the Never-Ending Happy Hour

Playboy columnist Dunn gives readers a double shot of his louche adventures, and mixes them with an extensive list of cocktail recipes. Dunn's drinking junkets take him everywhere there's booze, from Dublin pubs to New Orleans, Palm Springs to Pebble Beach. Along the way he blacks out, hooks up, and engages in a fair amount of offensive behavior. In chapters divided into brief, often numbered sections, Dunn offers advice on how to one-up wine snobs, hang out with rock stars, and impress pretty girls. He also tries to address the trauma of his difficult upbringing by troubled parents. Dunn describes a frat boy's dream life—what 20-year-old Phi Beta Kappa wouldn't love to play celebrity golf tournaments and get dating advice from Tommy Lee? Dunn is over 40, however, and the men's magazine bloviating—complete with endless name-dropping and perfunctory self-loathing—barely covers a brittle defensiveness. When Dunn turns toward more serious material—relationship problems, his father's alcoholism, his mother's mental illness—he unfortunately decides to take a false macho approach. Still, the cocktail recipes look pretty tasty. (Feb.)