Vamps and Tramps, by Camille Paglia (Penguin, £8.99 in UK)

The redoubtable Camille Paglia belongs to the recently emerged type of the Performer Intellectual, able to come over powerfully and ultra personally in all the media including TV, gifted with the ability to popularise ideas yet remain academically sound (she is a professor in her own right), a notable, public debater and journalist who can hold her own with fellow academics on their home ground. Although, a feminist on her own special terms, she is not cowed by feminist dogma or cliche's, as several of these articles, interviews, and sketches fully prove; she even has a vigorous, sometimes satirical, and ultratopical sense of humour, and in general is obviously a tough woman to cross swords with.