Includes bibliographical references and index.

1. The whore of Babylon -- 2. Patriarchs and priestesses -- 3. Fallen angels -- 4. Greek liberalism -- 5. Hindu ambiguity -- 6. Rome's daughters -- 7. Repentant sinners -- 8. Tang China's pleasure women -- 9. Muhammad's women -- 10. Guilds and cloisters, rogues and rapists -- 11. Celestial whores -- 12. The war of the roses [running title: The war of the rose] -- 13. Pox, punishment, and penitence -- 14. Splendor and misery of the courtesans -- 15. Love in the South Seas -- 16. Fanny Hill -- 17. Hara-kiri -- 18. The penetration of Africa -- 19. Nana and her times -- 20. Moral crusaders -- 21. Sex in the Wild West -- 22. Imperial virtue -- 23. Tango! -- 24. Ottoman footnote -- 25. The white slave trade -- 26. Kamikaze and comfort -- 27. Call girls -- 28. Academic sex tourism -- 29. Feminism and the sex workers' movement.

"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 around the globe up to the modern red-light district. It shows how different societies have viewed and dealt with prostitutes - for example, how ancient Greece and Rome incorporated them into several social echelons, even the priestess class; how the rise of the courtesan in nineteenth-century Europe shaped literature (with Zola's immortal Nana), fashion, the arts, and the modern sensibility. It uncovers the first manuals of sex and seduction, and tells the stories of the British Empire's campaigns against prostitution in India and about the "comfort women" who served the armies in the Pacific theater of World War II. It closes with the rise of the sex-workers' rights movement and "sex-positive" feminism, and a realistic look at the true risks and rewards of prostitution in the present day. Love for Sale spans a wide historical swathe armed with a lively wit and no-nonsense grasp of sex that recalls Camille Paglia's Sexual Personae."--Jacket.