Rating: 
Summary: An honest, funny look at a fascinating world
Review: After becoming engaged to a charming cowboy in Wyoming, New York and San Francisco-based writer and stripper Lily Burana decides to take a last tour of the strip clubs in America, in order to decide what stripping has meant to her. Burana packs her bags (even her inventory of necessaries is fascinating) and heads out into America.
With emotional honesty, a journalistic eye on her own life, and a great deal of humor, Burana narrates the story of her journey while she looks back at the generations of strippers and burlesque queens who preceded her, and at the same time evaluates the years she spent dancing in clubs in New York and San Francisco. Included in her narrative are starkly moving tales of the rebellious teenager she was, the activist she became, and the woman and writer she is.
Burana also describes the world and business of strip clubs with an experienced eye, and allows us to meet the dancers, managers, employees, and club owners. Burana gives us a fascinating look at the backstage world of stripping that is usually hidden from view.
Strip City combines history, expose, and memoir in such a way that the interweaving tales of Burana's past and present, and the story of her trade, make not only a moving and informative story, but an engaging one.
Rating: 
Summary: cute!
Review: An interesting read. Fairly well written. Some good satire about the business, but I liked "The Stripper Diaries" much better.
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Summary: Story of Lily Burana and her life as Barbie Faust..
Review: I believe that Lily Burana had good intentions in writing this book but I as the reader sure didn't get it. I find her life to be fascinating yet so many details were missing. I think she had a good story idea and then along the way it seemed that she lost her focus.
Her life in the dancing industry began at Peeplands in NYC which she reverts back to many times in the story about being ashamed of the types of things she did but never reveals the full story. Her true intention of her mission is to achieve closure before starting her new life, marrying her love Randy. Her story is too long and drawn out. Many details and explanations are left out. While I appreciate her efforts and the insights into this kind of life, I was unsatsified with her tale.
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Summary: Awesome book!!!
Review: I have to join many of the other exotic dancers and former exotic dancers who have posted reviews here applauding Strip City. Lily Burana really captures the experience of being an American stripper. Over the past few years I have read Strip City several times and will undoubtedly read it a few more. It is extremely well-written and profoundly insightful. Some of the negative reviews here surprised me at first because they were so mean-spirited, but they actually do reflect the types of attitudes I've become accustomed to in my years of dancing. It seems very important for some people to cling to the notion that all dancers are stupid, narcissistic, and unable to do anything besides take their clothes off. Even worse, dancers are accused of demeaning themselves and allowing themselves to be exploited. Dancing is a great way to make some money, but every stripper has to learn to disregard a large amount of unneccessary, untrue, and insulting remarks such as those. Most customers in strip clubs are respectful and appreciative, even if there is often a vocal minority of patrons who feel compelled to denigrate the performers. Exotic dance can be one of the most beautiful forms of artistry possible, but unfortunately many people seem to be threatened by women who are confident about their bodies and comfortable expressing their sexuality. Their negativity is draining at times because it seems so foolish that these people still attribute moral significance to the removal of clothing. I've danced for close to 10 years and consider erotic titillation to be healthy and enjoyable whether I'm performing or watching other dancers. It is extremely gratifying to see more and more women, like Lily Burana, who are speaking out and describing the exotic dance profession as it really is. It is an industry populated by many intelligent, thoughtful women who are capable of pursuing any type of career, and who have chosen to spend some portion of their lives on stage. Although there are some unpleasant aspects to the business the reality inside most strip clubs is that the majority of customers, staff, and performers are all just normal folks who are drawn to the allure of the dance.
Rating: 
Summary: Great, Candid Read
Review: I picked this book up after reading an excerpt in a magazine and was greatly surprised. Burana takes the reader on a tour of both her personal venture, a last chance stripping tour of the states, as well as provides an insight into the world of stripping. The descriptions were well written, allowing you to see and feel what she experienced. I didn't find the storyline to drag at all, in fact I wanted to read it again and again.
Rating:
Summary: Stripping From The Inside
Review: Lily has written an insightful book; she's "been there and done that". A must-read for anyone interested in the answers to "How can they do that?" and "Why do they do that?". If you've been a lady on-stage (or thought about it) or a gentleman in the audience, run and buy this book. It's not a glorification, but she tells it like it is.
Rating:
Summary: Not Very In Depth
Review: Ms. Burana does seem to skip away from any explanations for her "career", but obviously she enjoyed it or she wouldn't have done it, and wouldn't have gone to see strippers herself on her Retin A finding mission in Mexico. She treats her subject matter rather superficially, and if you really want to know what exactly what it was she did at Peepland or how she felt while degrading herself, you won't find out from this book. Maybe she just can't face it herself yet.
Rating:
Summary: Fascinating, Honest, and Eye Opening
Review: Peripatetic and restless Lily Burana has a problem. After having discovered love and a desire to establish a life with her intended, she cannot abide removing herself from her past experiences as a stripper. This strangely narcissistic, provocative and demeaning profession has grafted itself on her identity. Burana needs, one last time, to relive her past life, to understand what motivated her to become a stripper and to place exotic dance into perspective. This one "last hurrah" becomes grist for her enticing, complex and satisfying memoir, "Strip City." Full of detail (in some cases, too much detail) and strengthened by the author's willingness to cut herself no slack in her quest for authentic understanding, "Strip City" explores and exposes a way of life which arouses admiration, condemnation and ambivalence.Ultimately, Burana offers no pat answers as to her core motivations in the selection of stripping as a profession. Driven by alienation as a teenager and subsequent economic necessity, she reluctantly invents herself as a performer and risks her identity on satisfying others' fantasties. Her candid admission that she really doesn't know why she persisted in a stripper's life (given her obvious talent as a writer) is frustrating to the reader, especially after traveling with her through a year-long national farewell tour of strip joints. However, to her credit, Burana's odyssey is neither self-congratulatory or exculpatory. Her courage to face her own life and her steadfast commitment to discover her true internal compass bestow a sense of grace and honesty to her writing. Part autobiography, part social history, part contemplative rumination, "Strip City" explores a "business of many hungers." Burana acknowledges that stripping can be inhumane and dehumanizing, to both participants and observers, but at the same time exhilarating and liberating. Containing the "volatile elements of sex, money and power," stripping confirms and belies stereotypes. Just as one feels comfortable with conclusions about the women who bare themselves for money and the customers who get off (or get bored) by women performers, Burana presents a personal anecdote, a historical reference or a colleague whose life blasts conventional wisdom to bits. At its best, "Strip City" breathes fresh air into our national debate about sexuality, sexual expression and women's bodies. At its worst, the memoir is repetitive and borders on obsessive in its details about exotic dance. Yet, it is an important work. Full of behind-the-scene observations and candid self-criticism, "Strip City" not only describes a robust life, it illuminates the darker corners of unfulfilled needs and unanswered existential questions.
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Summary: Why i no longer have to write a book about stripping...
Review: Reading this book was so bizarre. I feel like i've been living paralell lives with Lily Burana. I'm also a journalist/writer who's stripped on and off over the last ten years. The want to go back to stripping that Lily describes in Strip City is quite accurate. Everytime i get a real job - no matter how fantastic and well paid it is - i always miss stripping. There is so much i relate to in this book - situations and stripper-isms, like "go-go head" ( I had a bad case of that in the club last night!). I have been toying with the idea of writing a book about my experiences in the industry, but now i don't have to - Lily Burana has done it for me. It's all in this fantastic book that I would recommend to anyone in the industry or interested in the industry. I loved strip City so much that I have bought copies for all my stripper friends. It has also inspired me to make my own coast to coast stripping journey accross Australia. Thankyou Lily Burana for writing this book!
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Summary: recovering stripper death therapy!
Review: Strip City is a highly recommended book for anyone whose been on the analytical side of strip club stripping or would like to be. It's great for those of us who have danced around wearing a slingshot and even for those who haven't. I commend her on making such a comprehensive presentation on a complex issue, she covers everything from feminism to illegal stage fees to the history of burlesque! I have been everywhere Lily has been and it was great to read about it! I was reading it on the plane coming home from Miami where I had an "unsuccessful" attempt to take up this romantic notion of farewell stripclub touring. It was great therapy for me. Words to let me know that you are not alone, and that this job is anything but easy. This book is clearly written from a heterosexual white woman's perspective but it is broad based enough so everyone who has stripped reads it and laughs and cries. The first scene begins in a tanning booth and I almost threw it in the garbage at that point, but gave it a benefit of the doubt and was grateful that I did!
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