Jacqueline Susann's 'The Love Machine': On top of the bestseller lists in July 1969

What was America reading in July of 1969? A potboiler by Jacqueline Susann — author of "Valley of the Dolls" — had recently knocked Philip Roth and "Portnoy's Complaint" out of the No. 1 position on The New York Times fiction bestseller list.

"The Love Machine" recounts the rise and fall of Robin Stone, a TV executive probably based on former CBS president James Aubrey, and the three women who love him: an actress, a fashion model and his long-suffering wife. In its review of the novel, Newsday called it "a yummy compound of babes, sex, women's magazine homilies and ill-concealed public figures. … The funny thing is, Miss Susann tells her story pretty well." A Southampton bookseller put it more bluntly in a feature at the time: "[Readers] take it for just what it is — a dirty book. But they still read it, even the people out here."

"The Love Machine" had close competition that summer from "Portnoy's Complaint," Philip Roth's controversial novel of a sex-obsessed Jewish boy, which Newsday called "Long Island's best-read, most talked of book this season." The newspaper reported that 80 people were on Levittown Library's waitlist for "Portnoy's" that August, with similar demand at other area libraries. Also flying off shelves was Mario Puzo's "The Godfather," the Mafia classic, later an acclaimed movie.