By Richard Milner and Christina Milner

Originally published in 1973, Black Players was the first book to do a thorough examination of the urban pimp culture. Social anthropologists Richard and Christina Milner were allowed access to the secretive and controversial world of pimps and prostitutes. Black Player guides the reader through every aspect of this unfamiliar world, allowing the Players to describe themselves, and the rules of the game in their own words. The Milners interviewed many of the top pimps in the Bay area and other parts of the country during the late 60's/early 70's. There is even a rare interview with legendary pimp-turned-author Iceberg Slim in this book. Out of this experience, has come one of the most fascinating journeys into a secret culture ever written.

Chatsworth, CA : King Flex Publishing, 2010. 362p.

Edited by Magaly Rodríguez García, Lex Heerma van Voss, and Elise van Nederveen Meerkerk

Selling Sex in the City offers a worldwide analysis of prostitution that takes a long historical approach which covers a time period from 1600 to the 2000s. The overviews in this volume examine sex work in more than twenty notorious “sin cities” around the world, ranging from Sydney to Singapore and from Casablanca to Chicago. Situated within a comparative framework of local developments, the book takes up themes such as labour relations, coercion, agency, gender, and living and working conditions. Selling Sex in the City thus reveals how prostitution and societal reactions to the trade have been influenced by colonization, industrialization, urbanization, the rise of nation states, imperialism, and war, as well as by revolutions in politics, transport, and communication.

Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2017. 909p.

By Hélène Le Bail, Calogero Giametta, Noémie Rassouw

The main objective of this study is to assess the impact on sex workers’ living and working conditions of the act of law n° 2016-444 (adopted by France’s parliament on the 13th of April 2016 with the aim of reinforcing the fight against the prostitution system and supporting people in prostitution).1 This is a qualitative study focused on the viewpoints of sex workers themselves who are directly affected by the law. For the purposes of this analysis interviews were conducted with 70 sex workers (a further 38 sex workers were consulted via focus groups and workshops). A further 24 interviews and focus groups were conducted with sex worker groups or other organisations working with sex workers across France. Two researchers (in political science and sociology) supervised the study and analysed the results in close collaboration with 11 outreach organisations. Alongside this qualitative study, a quantitative survey was also conducted between January and February 2018 involving 583 sex workers the results of which were integrated into this report.\

Saint-Denis, France: Médecins du Monde. 2019, 96p.

By Anthony McEnery and Helen Baker.

Corpus linguistics has much to offer history, being as both disciplines engage so heavily in analysis of large amounts of textual material. This book demonstrates the opportunities for exploring corpus linguistics as a method in historiography and the humanities and social sciences more generally. Focussing on the topic of prostitution in 17th-century England, it shows how corpus methods can assist in social research, and can be used to deepen our understanding and comprehension. McEnery and Baker draw principally on two sources – the newsbook Mercurius Fumigosis and the Early English Books Online Corpus. This scholarship on prostitution and the sex trade offers insight into the social position of women in history.

London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2016. 271p.