Writer and journalist Richard Bernstein worked for thirty years as a foreign correspondent, culture reporter, and book critic for Time magazine and then for the New York Times. In the early 1970s, he studied Chinese in Taiwan, in the mid-1980s he was a special correspondent for Time in Hong Kong, and then the magazine's first correspondent in China. Naturally, his first book was dedicated to China. Bernstein traveled the world from South Africa to Libya and from New Caledonia to Poland, but maintained an interest in Asia. In 2006, he left his full-time job in the media and switched to writing books. His bestselling and controversial book, East, West and Sex, explores the relationship between sex and power. Western travelers and conquerors, arriving in the mysterious East, plunged into a world of sensual pleasures that were prohibited in Europe. What was considered a sin in the West was perceived differently in the East, and it was difficult not to take advantage of it. Centuries have passed, but sex tourism is still thriving, and people from the West continue to travel to the East in search of sexual pleasure. Why do Western men behave this way? And why do Eastern women allow them to behave this way? Richard Bernstein's provocative book is about this and much more.