Rating: 
Summary: A very important, talent piece of writing
Review: A fascinating and open-minded view of Nevada's Mustang brothel. The author begins visiting this ranch for condom samples, trying to discover why the women at the ranch have not been touched by the AIDS virus. She becomes intrigued by the lifestyle at the ranch and turns out to be a regular face studying daily habits of the brothel from quarels among the workers to s&m parties, forming good acquaintance with the workers there. The writer is engaging and engaged, not in the least pretentious or judgmental and takes an all-rounded view enquiring after local perspectives as well as carefully probing the opinions of the prositutes who work there. Alexa Albert gives an incredibly convincing argument for the legalization of prostitution. This book intelligent, insightful, engrossing and well-written. I can't recommend the book highly enough and would say it's easily one of the best non-fiction books I've read all year.
Rating:
Summary: A thoughtful study
Review: Alexa Albert's book ``Brothel: Mustang Ranch and its Women'' is a work that was nearly seven years in the making. The reader is the beneficiary of Albert's patience and persistence. What started out as a public health study while Albert was a medical student, has resulted in a compelling, thoughtful report on prostitution. It took Albert nearly three years to get her foot in the door at the country's most notorious brothel - the Mustang Ranch, just outside of Reno, Nev. Over the next four years, Albert would live at the brothel off and on. In that time, Albert was given a rare glimpse into the very private world of legalized prostitution. At the outset, Albert admits that she ``fundamentally believed prostitution was a dehumanizing, objectifying business that did women real damage.'' But by withholding judgement, Albert got to know the women and they were eager to confide in her. What she came to realize was ``knee-jerk moralists speak of prostitutes as flawed characters lacking in values. But no easy formula fit the women I met in Nevada's brothels.'' The stories Albert tell are fascinating. She also intersperses her discussions with the women with perspectives on the history of prostitution in Nevada and legendary brothel owner Joe Conforte. Albert's effort is hardly a clinical, overview of prostitution -- it is a thorough, thoughtful study.
Rating:
Summary: Where no one has been before...
Review: Alexa Albert's study in Nevada's well-known (and now defunct) Mustand Ranch brothel was a fascinating read. Albert lobbied the Nevada Brothel Association, for three years in order to conduct a public health study, and was finally given admittance. Nevada is the only state in the U.S. that has legal brothels. Albert wanted to study condom use and measures to prevent the spread of STDs. No public health official, or doctor had ever conducted a study in a brothel, seemingly the most obvious place to learn about it. Albert begins the book talking about her study, but the rest of the book is more of a journalistic style, reporting on the lives and trials of the Mustang Ranch prostitutes. The prostitutes are not portrayed as whores or drug addicts, but real women with outside lives, families to support, and educated minds. She became friends with some of the women, and continues to correspond with them, even after Mustang Ranch was shut down by the IRS in the late 1990s.
Rating: 
Summary: Good book
Review: I had to read Brothel as a book for my Gender and Womens studies class, so of course I did not jump to the reading as I normally would with a book that I picked. However, from the begining the book was quite interesting and informational. Alexa Albert not only explains one of the legal brothels in Nevada but also takes you on a journey in the life of a legal prostitute. Albert was astonished that the women liked what they did and tried to excell in their profession.
This is a good book that deals close with the profession of Prostitution.
Rating:
Summary: Insight
Review: I thought this book was extremely well written. It was a little on the short side for me, but was jam packed with information. This book would be a helpful tool for anyone writing a paper on legal prostitution.
Rating: 
Summary: An interesting book but ....
Review: It was an interesting book an eye-opener but could be more intersting if Dr.Alberta would keep all those names and all those political county informations to herself and would write more about the background and characters of the prostitutes. Dr. Alberta sounds very pro-brothel and calles even Mustang ranch a family, which I find absurd!
Rating:
Summary: Interesting Quick Read
Review: The book is an interesting quick read, written by a female Dr. who did one of the first inside studies. Interested things you will learn or may have already suspected:
1. With protection there have not been any recorded AIDs
cases in a legal brothel in NV....condoms work.
2. Ladies don't do this because they are working their way
through college or seeking an advanced degree. Most do it
because they need the money and don't have the skills to
earn the money they need w/ their current job skills.
Many have several children and families to support.
3. The ladies working here are not weird freaks, but mostly
just regular females from all different backgrounds.
4. Many of the ladies are Not 18 - 25, but much older.
5. The only negative fact that I learned about legalized
prostitution is that unfortunately pimps sometimes still
exists in the picture.
6. My opinion from the book is that legalized prostitution is
a better alternative than illegal prostitution.
Overall this is a highly recommended book on an interesting subject.
Rating:
Summary: Interesting Quick Read
Review: The book is an interesting quick read, written by a female Dr. who did one of the first inside studies. Interested things you will learn or may have already suspected:
1. With protection there have not been any recorded AIDs
cases in a legal brothel in NV....condoms work.
2. Ladies don't do this because they are working their way
through college or seeking an advanced degree. Most do it
because they need the money and don't have the skills to
earn the money they need w/ their current job skills.
Many have several children and families to support.
3. The ladies working here are not weird freaks, but mostly
just regular females from all different backgrounds.
4. Many of the ladies are Not 18 - 25, but much older.
5. The only negative fact that I learned about legalized
prostitution is that unfortunately pimps sometimes still
exists in the picture.
6. My opinion from the book is that legalized prostitution is
a better alternative than illegal prostitution.
Overall this is a highly recommended book on an interesting subject.
Rating:
Summary: What did YOU expect.
Review: This is a factual account of life in a brothel. It is not shocking. It is not grist for the femininist mill of exploitation and paranoia. It is a true story of how things work in a well managed brothel. The women are suspicious and are only convinced by weeks of close contact to reveal their inner-selves (as they perceive them). Dr. Albert has removed the scarlet letter and show that these are American women who made a choice about making a living or supporting their children, husbands or boyfriends (read pimps). They provide a service to men clients who are far more pathetic than the women. Facing a lineup of women that they can rent in order to achieve something as ridiculous as orgasm explains a lot about men. Are they totally lacking in imagination? Admittedly a skilled working girl can not only amuse and titillate and detumesce their client's pitiful needs, the fact remains that there is confusion of commercial sex with male concupiscience.
As an argument for regulated prostitution it is compelling. That women have the right to work, that they should be secure and protected from disease is given. That management should be assertive for both workers and clients is no surprise. Should it be allowed in the rest of the US? Probably not unless run by the Department of the Treasury or some central authority. Will it ever work in the rest of the country? Only if the income is great enough, like casino gambling, to interest local authority.
From a business view, prostitution has a very limited cash basis since each woman can only treat one client at a time(usually) and the throughput of the system cannot be increased to make it capitol intensive.
Perhaps Dr. Albert would feel more of a vocation in psychiatry to try to have a better understanding of motivations.
An excellent book is a photographic atlas called "the Brothels of Nevada" by Timothy Hursley (see my review)
Rating:
Summary: a must read
Review: This wonderful book is not about prostitution per se. It deals with legalized brothel prostitution and there is a difference...a big difference. But Brothel is even more. Alexa Albert takes us behind the scenes at the once famous Mustang Ranch in Nevada where she actually lived off and on while researcing this book. But, it's more than behind the scenes. Ms. Albert explores the very heart and soul of the women who live and work at the ranch. She becomes part of the family atmosphere and bonds with several of the "working" girls. There are as many stories in the house as there are women. Alexa Albert hears many tales. Were they all true? Were some apocryphal? You'll go behind closed doors with the author as she visits a "party" to observe first hand what's happening. but don't misunderstand. This bookd is not pruient and even the up close and personal is presented in a very clinical manner. If you're looking for porn you're looking in the wrong place. If you want to be truly enlightened, read Alexa Albert's nonpareil book...Brothel: Mustang Ranch and it women.
|
