Promotions - Choice's Outstanding Academic Titles 2025 -

From the 1870s to the 1930s, social hygienists and lawmakers combined forces to establish American sexual exceptionalism: the belief that the US held the power to stop prostitution and trafficking efforts on the global stage. Sexual exceptionalism framed the US as a country that forbade sexual immorality and punished deficient women for sullying its superior state of civilization. Payne (Univ. of Mississippi) begins with the "new abolitionists" who fought to liberate fallen women from state-regulated prostitution in the wake of slavery's moral stain. This mission was taken up in India and the Philippines as the US entered into a state of empire and forced a reconsideration of the dangers of interracial sex. At home, victims of white slavery were positioned at once as racially pure and sexually foreign women in need of control. Soldiers of WW I took an oath to abide by the "American Plan" and resist temptations to engage in extramarital sex, thereby demonstrating a civilized nationality. Payne's careful research of reform projects restores the voices of sex workers to the historical narrative through ethical storytelling. This is a truly exceptional work.Summing Up: Highly recommended. All readers.