A review by left_coast_justin
The Wisdom of Whores: Bureaucrats, Brothels, and the Business of AIDS by Elizabeth Pisani

3.0

Pisani is a good journalist and writer -- I thoroughly enjoyed her book Indonesia, Inc. -- and I was carried along through this one by its page-by-page readability. Along the way, I learned quite a bit about the numbers behind the headlines, and how prevalent risky behavior is, even in areas where it is quite hidden from view. I was unaware, for example, that metro NYC has more than 180,000 burghers who inject drugs, and that about a third of these are not what we'd think of as junkies, but rather functional people with families and careers and a carefully-managed heroin habit.

What would have made this book better is a tighter narrative arc -- she vividly describes her entree into this field in Hong Kong, and the conference that made her quit -- but a more disciplined story showing how A led to B led to C.... would have resulted in a shorter, less repetitive and better book.