Instruct: Classify Amazon reviews into positive or negative sentiment
Query: Could be so much better

This is a subject crying out for a well-written and moderately scholarly history, or at least an excellent popular history. This book is unfortunately neither of these. The translation is very poor (I assume that it is accurate - it is only the English prose that is poor.) There is virtually no documentation. And the book does not address the history of prostitution per se, only episodes, some of which are more convincing than others.I can only assume most historians are squeamish about this subject, so all credit to Mr. Ringdal for trying.I recommend that readers seeking to learn about the impact of or reaction to prostitution look to more defined histories. A good book along those lines is "Sin in the Second City".