Synopses & Reviews
How did you first learn about sex? If you grew up in the 1970s, it may have been from a gleefully lusty tour guide named Xaviera Hollander.
In the late 1960s that era of sexual chaos, when Playboy Clubs and love-ins were competing for national attention a beautiful, intelligent young Dutch secretary named Xaviera de Vries moved to New York, grew swiftly tired of her desk job... and soon became the most visible and glamorous madam the city had ever seen. As Xaviera Hollander, she published a shockingly candid account of her life behind the brothel door. The Happy Hooker shot straight to the top of the bestseller lists, sold more than fifteen million copies, and made this enterprising young woman an international phenomenon.
Thirty years later, these delightfully explicit tales of the '60s and '70s swingers' scene including countless jaw-dropping stories of lesbianism, bondage, fetishism, and more remain as titillating as ever, charged with the mix of shrewd observation and uninhibited appetite that made Hollander an irresistible storyteller. The Happy Hookeris a classic: the world's greatest book on the world's oldest profession.
Review
"Although the book ended up in the hands of respectable readers, it's little more than smut, as Hollander recounts how she left Holland for a job as a secretary in New York, got bored, and became a prostitute and brothel manager." Library Journal
Synopsis
The 30th anniversary edition of one of the modern classics of the sexual revolution--with a new Afterword by the author.
An international phenomenon upon its initial publication in 1972, The Happy Hooker established Xaviera Hollander--previously the most powerful madam in New York City--as the world's best-known observer and commentator on sexual issues. A racy account of her life behind the brothel door, The Happy Hooker became an instant classic that marked the intersection between the Playboy generation and the sexual revolution of the feminist era. Hollander left no vice unturned, covering lesbianism, bondage, and other sexual appetites with a frank tone that left the reader with no doubt that they were listening to a master...or mistress, as it were.
Now restored gloriously to print in a first-ever trade paperback edition, The Happy Hooker will reintroduce a whole new generation to the carefree days of swinging in the '60s and '70s.
About the Author
Xaviera Hollander's first book, The Happy Hooker, was published in 1972; since then it has been translated into fifteen languages and sold millions of copies around the world. Hollander began writing the column Call Me Madam in Penthouse that same year a role she fulfills to this day and has been named the magazine's most popular columnist. Now a promoter of the arts in her native Holland and the author of more than a dozen books, she divides her time between Spain and Amsterdam.