As an academic stocking-stuffer, this book delivers -- unless the academic on your list is a multicultural fanatic. ( "Bell's Eurocentric orientation will freak some people out," one reader warns.) Early in this text, Bell reads Plato "from the position of the philosophical clitoris." It's uphill (or down) from there -- depending on your liking for deconstruction -- as Bell travels from ancient Greece to the 1990s, using the "prostitute body " as her signpost. Courtesans like Aspasia, social reformers of Josephine Butler's ilk, and sexual thinkers such as Havelock Ellis all mingle in Bell's arena with Candida Royalle, Annie Sprinkle and Sigmund Freud. Prostitutes Anonymous (a 12-step group, more familiar to tabloid TV fans than to academics) makes an appearance in one chapter. And Bell's discussion of sacred prostitution manages to get beyond the usual New Age homilies. Binding all this together is her belief that prostitution "has no inherent meaning." But you already suspected that -- didn't you? To order, call (800) 842- 6796.

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