Love for Sale: A World History of Prostitution

by RichardDaly (Translator), NilsJohanRingdal (Author)

• New

  Paperback
  2005

  $17.89

  From the Whore of Babylon to The Happy Hooker, eminent historian Nils Johan Ringdal has written a masterly, extremely readable world history of the world's oldest profession, spanning a wide historical swathe armed with a lively wit. Beginning with The Epic of Gilgamesh, the Old Testament, and ancient cultures from Greece to India and beyond, Love for Sale takes the reader on a tour through the entire recorded history of prostitution up to the modern red-light district. It shows how different societies have dealt with prostitutes--ancient Greece, Rome, and India incorporated them into several social echelons, including the priestess class; their close relations with artists in 19th-century Europe made them muses to the modern sensibility; the Victorians campaigned against them. It shows the similarities between medieval European heterosexuals and contemporary gay men when visiting public baths, gives lively commentary on the classic Fanny Hill and on Emma Goldman's and Eva Peron's sympathy for prostitutes, and closes with Sydney Biddle Barrows, the rise of the sex-workers' rights movement and contemporary sex-positive feminism, and a realistic look at the true risks and rewards of prostitution in the present day.
  

• Used

  Hardcover
  2004

  $3.26

  The exchange of sex for money is often cited as the first profession, and is certainly the most controversial: from Lilith and Mary Magdalene to Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman, the prostitute has been a catalyst for changing notions of love, morality, and sexuality. |n this book, Nils Johan Ringdal delivers a magisterial -and extremely readable - world history of this most maligned, and most persistent, occupation.

  Love for Sale encompasses the entire recorded history of prostitution, from the ancient world right up to the modern red-light district and beyond and is packed with fresh insights and anecdotes.In ancient Rome, for example, prostitutes were so central to all levels of society that even priestesses were sometimes also hookers.Ringdal analyses the British Empire's campaigns against prostitution in India and the 'comfort women' who served the armies in the Pacific theater of World War II.He also takes a realistic look at the real risks and rewards of prostitution in the present day.
  Love for Sale is a lively and uninhibited account of a phenomenon that is almost as ancient as mankind.