Olde-Tymey Vice

Mara L. Keire, a member of the history faculty at the University of Oxford, has made a career out of studying debauchery. Her published works have included “Dope Fiends and Degenerates: The Gendering of Addiction in the Early Twentieth Century,” and “The Vice Trust: A Reinterpretation of the White Slavery Scare in the United States, 1907-1917”; now, with her new book “For Business & Pleasure: Red-Light Districts and the Regulation of Vice in the United States, 1890-1933,” Keire explores the culture that developed in the seedier spots within New Orleans, New York, San Francisco, and points between. Recently, Keire answered my questions about vice’s history—and its present-day role—in America. Read more at newyorker.com…

Published by Sally

I’m the deputy managing editor at strategy + business, a freelance editor at Belt, and the former web manager at The New Yorker. My writing and editing also has appeared in The New York Times, The Independent, the Observer, the Rumpus, the Cleveland Clinic Press, and Northern Ohio Live. Additionally, I was a founding team member of Maven, a healthcare app for women. I live in Brooklyn with my husband, the musician and writer Mike Errico, and our daughter. Follow me @sally_errico.