Love for Sale

From the Whore of Babylon to Pretty Woman, the exchange of sex for money is often cited as the oldest profession. Now, eminent historian Nils Johan Ringdal delivers a magisterial, extremely readable world history of this most maligned-and most persistent-form of human commerce. 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; and the Victorians campaigned against them. Love for Sale 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.