book question

[truepenny]

Has anyone out there read Anne M. Butler's Daughters of Joy, Sisters of Misery: Prostitutes in the American West, 1865-90 (U of Illinois P, 1987)? I'm currently on p. 38 and am seriously wondering if there's going to be sufficient pay-off to reward slogging through the unsupported generalizations, the implicit but unexamined moral framework imposed by the author, the failure to define terms or produce a sufficiently theorized conceptual model ...

I'm coming perilously close to answering my own question here.

The book was worth purchasing ($6 at Half-Price Books) for the photographs alone, but do I have any hope of the text getting better, or should I just chalk this one up as "pioneering work in neglected field" and let go?

Comments

[liminalia.livejournal.com]

If you're looking for more info on this field, this book is much better:
http://www.amazon.com/Soiled-Doves-Prostitution-Early-Women/dp/096190884X

[oddmonster.livejournal.com]

I have this on my to-be-read list, so I can't answer your question. I can however, recommend Good Time Girls of the Alaska-Yukon Gold Rush by Lael Morgan as an engaging read on the topic. If you want to switch horses in midstream, or just add it to the list.

[lilithsaintcrow.livejournal.com]

I read Soiled Doves too and got a lot out of it, mostly because the author tried to just tell the stories and stay out of the way. As a matter of fact, I was going to mention it if nobody else had, the Selkie and I both read and mostly-enjoyed it as Musecrack. Though it shares some of the same weaknesses as the book you're mentioning...

I don't have any other books to offer, but I'd say, if you're halfway through and it's this much of a slog, just try for something good in the bibliography. That's my SOP when it comes to a slog, anyway.

Ewww

[muneraven.livejournal.com]

If you are already getting messages like that in 38 pages I doubt the author is going to change his approach. Too bad!

On the other hand, sometimes reading something objectionable like that can make you mad enough to write a book in response . . .