Accolades

"I don't think I've ever read such an entertaining historical work. It has the wisdom granted by perspective, without the condescension of someone who thinks we're wiser than our ancestors. Whether you want to fuel your indignation, or simply furnish yourself with enough jaw-dropping data to galvanise a hundred party conversations, you really must shell out for this book. It's worth every penny."

• Nicholas Lezard

  literary critic,The Guardian

"It's rare that a book so well researched and provocative is also so downright entertaining – Sex and Punishment will have you gripped and fascinated (and sometimes laughing out loud) at how legal systems over the millennia have attempted to regulate mankind's unruly carnal desires."

• Tony Perrottet

  author of Napoleon's Privates: 2,500 Years of History Unzipped and The Sinner's Grand Tour: A Journey Through the Historical Underbelly of Europe

"A wonderful exposure of the illogicality of so much legislation that attempts to regulate sexual activity ... from the age of consent to adultery and sex on college campuses."

• Mary Beard

  Professor of Classics at Cambridge University and Classics editor of the Times Literary Supplement

"Sex and Punishment is an illuminating and deftly told account of the two urges that have done so much to define civilization: humanity's appetite for sex and its concern to regulate the consequences. As Eric Berkowitz shows, both impulses have been in flux for centuries, and his colorful history serves as a timely reminder of just how arbitrary – and ludicrous – the moral certainties of one era can appear to the next."

• Sadakat Kadri

  author of The Trial: A History, from Socrates to O. J. Simpson and Heaven on Earth: A Journey Through Shari'a Law from the Deserts of Ancient Arabia to the Streets of the Modern Muslim World.