I have very mixed feelings about The Johns: Sex for Sale and the Men Who Buy It. On one hand, the author has clearly spent a significant amount of time investigating human trafficking and the abuse of children domestically and abroad, and I applaud his efforts to raise awareness of these tragedies. Unfortunately this makes the title of his book somewhat misleading, as the focus is almost exclusively on the men who subsidize these types of activities as consumers. There are already a number of books that focus on these men (such as Travels in the Skin Trade: Tourism and the Sex Industry by Jeremy Seabrook), so I was hoping that this book would also discuss johns who patronize expensive escorts, legal brothels in Nevada, etc. There are mentions, but they are brief.

The intentions of the author are noble, but by demonizing all pornography and prostitution he over-simplifies a complicated issue. He dismisses the "happy hookers" who attest to entering the profession willingly and call for legalization and regulation as either not representative of most women in the profession, or puppets for pimps and mobsters. By disregarding the opinions and experiences of these women isn't he in a way disrespecting them, albeit in a well-intentioned way?

There is a lot of good information on the dark side of prostitution here, and much to enrage the reader. I wish the book would have had a broader focus though.

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