He is also the former editor of Penthouse Forum, the former interim editor of Maxim magazine, and the former executive editor of The Week. According to The New York Times, Heidenry was accused by Philip Nobile, his former coworker at Penthouse Forum, of plagiarizing parts of What Wild Ecstasy. The accusation raised the question of whether ordinary, workaday prose, rather than "unique expression," can be plagiarized.
He is the former editor of Saint Louis magazine and the founder of the Saint Louis Literary Supplement. Heidenry is the author of Theirs Was The Kingdom: Lila and DeWitt Wallace & the Story of the Reader"s Digest (West West Norton, 1993), What Wild Ecstasy: The Rise and Fall of the Sexual Revolution (Simon & Schuster, 1997), The Gashouse Gang: How Dizzy Dean, Leo Durocher, Branch Rickey, Pepper Martin, and Their Colorful, Come-from-Behind Ball Club Won the World Series-and America"s Heart-During the Great Depression (Public Affairs, 2007), Zero at the Bone: The Playboy, the Prostitute, and the Murder of Bobby Greenlease (Street Martin"s Press, 2009), and the co-author, with Brett Topel, of The Boys Who Were Left Behind: The 1944 World Series between the Hapless Saint Louis Browns and the Legendary Saint Louis Cardinals (University of Nebraska Press, 2006).
