Review of Male Sex Work and Society. Edited by Victor Minichiello and John Scott (eds.) Harrington Press, 2014, 512 pages, $120 (cloth).Men have been selling sex in every country in the world and as far back as we can go in recorded history. Until recently, however, this phenomenon was practically ignored by the social sciences, in frank contrast to the study of women who sell sex. What relatively few studies existed of male sex work up to the 1970s eschewed what Laura Agustin, in 2005 Sexualities article, termed a cultural studies approach (2005), concentrating instead on the medicalization of the male sex worker, generally understood as deviant, when not openly classified as mentally ill. Even after the onset of gay liberation, men who sold sex were generally overlooked by social scientific researchers, outside of the field of DST/HIV prevention. As result, we know relatively little about male sex work as compared to female sex work and, up to now, prospective scholars interested in the topic have had to draw together articles from diverse sources. No introductory primer has been available.Male Sex Work and Society (MSWaW) attacks this problem and succeeds, for the most part. Editors Minichiello and Scott have produced beautiful, diverse, wide-ranging and highly accessible collection of articles, designed to introduce the topic to novices or to researchers (like myself) who are specialists in related areas. Male Sex Work and Society expands our view of men selling sex from the stereotype of street hustling, following axes of interest that transcend the criminal and medical and into settings beyond Western Europe and North America.The book has its defects. It tries to bite off more than it can chew. Even its 512 pages are not enough to more than briefly present the topics touched upon and each of its four sections could be expanded into collection of volumes. Furthermore, as an introduction to the field, it stretches itself thin and, as result, may strike specialists as superficial. These weaknesses, however, are not the editors' fault, but reflection on the relative lack of consolidation of male sex work research and the concentrations of the relatively small number of scholars engaged in studying it. A more unaccountable lapse is the lack of an article giving an overview of the available English-language bibliography.Where MSWaS really shines is in its historical overviews, which are concentrated in the first section. Of particular interest here are the comparisons and contrasts with female sex work, as well as the enduring and historical linkages between male sex work and cultures of homosexuality. The prize essay, to my mind, is the first chapter by Mack Freidman (the only author not right from position in the health or academic fields). Friedman's overview of the history of male sex work in the west from ancient times to the present brings up some uncomfortable points, the main one being that male sex workers paradoxically seem to have experienced better working conditions in more highly homophobic societies. Freidman is ably backed up by Kerwin Kaye's essay concentrating on modern times and Russell Sheaffer's thoughtful analysis of the portrayal of male sex work in film.The second section is economic in focus and contains Allan Tyler's work on advertising male sexual services. …