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. 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.