"The controversy waned when the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints began to move away from polygamy in the 1890s, but resurfaced with the rise of the anti-Mormon American Party that sponsored the Stockade prostitution district. Nichols traces the interplay of prostitution and reform through World War I, when Mormon and gentile moral codes converged at the expense of prostitutes. He also considers how polygamy and religious conflict distinguished Salt Lake City from other cities struggling to abolish prostitution in the Progressive Era."--Jacket.

For centuries of Chinese history, polygamy and prostitution were closely linked practices that legitimized the 'polygynous male'. This title introduces a fresh concept, 'passive polygamy', to explain the unusual number of Qing stories in which women take charge of a man's desires, turning him into an instrument of female will.

Jacob and Solomon were polygamists. Tamar and Rahab were prostitutes. What are polygamists and prostitutes doing on the pages of Holy Scripture? And God told the prophet Hosea to marry a prostitute. What about Cain—did he really marry his sister? Abraham did, and he was also a polygamist. Lot offered his daughters up for rape, David committed adultery (or rape?) and the Bible calls both men righteous. Love, Old Testament style, was bizarre. As readers of the Old Testament encounter these weird, confusing, and horrific “love” stories they ask, “What’s up with sex in the Old Testament?” The church often ignores the R-rated bits of the Bible, so it’s hard for people to find answers to their disturbing questions about sex in Scripture, which can lead people to give up on God and God’s word. However, these stories were included in the Bible for a reason, to reveal an even more shocking “love” story. When humans behave badly, God behaves graciously. God not only forgives people with sexual baggage, but also redeems their lives and includes them in his mission. God’s word records their story to benefit us. Just as sex was not often ideal in the Old Testament, it’s often not ideal today. Instead of ignoring these stories, Prostitutes and Polygamists engages, discusses, and learns from them.

Throughout the development of the American West, prostitution grew and flourished within the mining camps, small towns, and cities of the nineteenth-century Rocky Mountains. Whether escaping a bad home life, lured by false advertising, or seeking to subsidize their income, thousands of women chose or were forced to enter an industry where they faced segregation and persecution, fines and jailing, and battled the hazards of disease, drug addiction, physical abuse, pregnancy, and abortion. They dreamed of escape through marriage or retirement, but more often found relief only in death. An integral part of western history, the stories of these women continue to fascinate readers and captivate the minds of historians today. Expanding on the research she did for Brothels, Bordellos, and Bad Girls (UNM Press), historian Jan MacKell moves beyond the mining towns of Colorado to explore the history of prostitution in the Rocky Mountain states of Arizona, Idaho, Montana, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming. Each state had its share of working girls and madams like Big Nose Kate or Calamity Jane who remain celebrities in the annals of history, but MacKell also includes the stories of lesser-known women whose role in this illicit trade nonetheless shaped our understanding of the American West.

These profiles of the soiled doves who plied the oldest trade in the Rocky Mountains explain many of the facts of life in the nineteenth and twentieth century West.

The hellenistic royal families, from Alexander the Great to the last Cleopatra, took part in dynastic in-fighting that was vicious, colourful and instructive. In this they anticipated by centuries the better known excesses under Roman potentates such as Claudius and Nero. This major new study explores the intricate quarrels and violence within the ruling hellenistic families. A main theme is the role of 'amphimetric' disputes, competition between a ruler's offspring from different women. The book also includes a full exploration of the role of courtesans in the political and sexual intrigues of the hellenistic courts.

This is a collection of histories of various aspects of American sociology of religion. The contributions range from descriptions of early dissertations, accounts of changes in theoretical conceptualization, the evolution of studies of particular denominations, to the rise of new areas of inquiry such as globalization, feminism, new religions, and the study of the religious traditions of Latino/a Americans. Taken as a whole, the volume complements rather than duplicates commemorative issues of the relevant journals, which focused on the scholarly organizations in the field. It represents a first effort to develop an organized treatment of the fascinating history of the specialty in the U.S.A.