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Rating: 
Summary: Butch, Bitchy and Brilliant
Review: Camille Paglia is one-of-a-kind. In a way that's too bad, but in another way, thank Goodness! She's brash, she's obnoxious, she's opinionated, she's full of you-know-what. But she is also extremely intelligent and has an incisive mind that cuts through all the rhetoric and dogma and political correctness to get through to the plain old common sense Truth. The PC branch of Liberalism has branded her as a right-winger, but I think Paglia has been more than vindicated by the 2004 presidential election. She has written time and again that if the PC Leftists did not get into the real world, that people would look to the Right for common sense. And that is exactly what has happened. She is frankly Lesbian but likes men (she says she is [...]). Although she criticizes lesbians as having no humor, Camille herself is hilarious. [...] I laughed all the way through this delightful and refreshing book. Her withering criticisms of Establishment Feminists and the American Academe are lip-smacking good. She may be butch, but she's also bitchy. However, Paglia doesn't just criticize. She also offers what I think are valid and realistic remedies. I give this book four stars. I would have given it five stars, but she contradicts herself several times. For example, at one point she admits that men need a space without women and then in another section she laments that[...] men won't let her into the raunchier [...] milieus. So, she wants exceptions made in her case? Curious, in that the thing she really hates about Establishment Feminism is their always wanting special favors for the poor female "victims of male oppression."
I think Camille and her writing are wonderful. She has the kind of great original American Mind that we have not seen since the days of our Founding Fathers. Whether you agree with her or not, you cannot ignore her. (Gloria Steinem and Susan Sontag tried to and just made big fools of themselves.) Any American who claims to have an intellect MUST read her.
Rating: 
Summary: Glimpsing At A Brilliant Woman Of Substance In History!
Review: Camille Paglia is simply dazzling from her quick wit to her sound speech given with liquid speed. I have admired her courage to speak out, her insight into social changes and her keystone character keeping her two feet on the ground at all time.These Essays are easy to criticize if they are not understood to be a reflection that describes the essence of her personality, celebrity status and solid substance. The author is controversial because she reads what she talks about. Camille studies the subject matter she selects to analyze. And is fearless in the face of the pseudo intellectual political correct demagogues. Few are brave enough to challenge her for she will expose the failures of soiled social engineering trying to replace individual freedoms. Few people on earth have her abilities, insight and particular way of thinking that can be understood by all ages and educational levels. This is why models who think they are smart because they slept with smart men hate her. Why media created celebrities of less educational credential despise her. And how many simply tune her out because she approaches topics they refuse to read, hear or comprehend. Ms. Paglia without intention makes them look small. In short order they realize they can neither keep up and will eventually be embarrassed because of her brilliance. Nonetheless, she does so in hopes of educating the many regardless of the backbiting of the few. I highly recommend this book without reservation if you want a brief glimpse of one of the most outstanding woman in all of history.
Rating:
Summary: The world won't listen
Review: Camille Paglia's image is a blessing and a curse. Like Chris Rock, she can get away with telling the truth about our repressed, hypersensitive culture. Unfortunately, her audience expects her to say shocking things, therefore her broadsides have lost some of their impact. Her enemies, the Mackinnons and Dworkins, won the culture wars long ago. Their beliefs are now written into law, taught in college and inscribed in police procedure manuals. Critics like Paglia are a recognized but ineffectual voice, easily dismissed by the establishment. For these reasons, Ms. Paglia's essays and journalistic pieces may be slightly disappointing. The interviews and transcripts, however, are the real pleasure; they recreate the "dissident feminist" at her fearless, truth-telling best.
Rating: 
Summary: Pseudoscience
Review: Curious about the causes of homosexuality? Read pages 75-76 ofthis book. Paglia has the most insightful understanding of human sexuality and psychology of anyone alive.
Rating:
Summary: Scholarship mixed in with Megalomania
Review: If there is a mountain called megalomania, she climbed to the top of it with the *boring* chapters of her book in which she details the influences her gay male friends have had on her (she's not that important that we need to know her influences) and exhaustively lists every single magazine article, book, comic strip, blurb, radio show, etc etc etc ad infinitum that she's ever appeared in. Ugh! Otherwise, it's a good book!
Rating:
Summary: Food for thought...debate...and brawl
Review: One of the most controversial figures in contemporary society is explosive critic, art historian, pop philosopher, and author Camille Paglia. Her newest collection of essays, VAMPS AND TRAMPS, includes sharpened swords drawn and abruptly driven into the current direction of gay activism, feminist thought, and academia. Her criticism is fierce, at once educated and adolescent, she is a rebel thinker whose mind seems in constant overdrive. She's philsophy with cajones. In addition this book contains her thoughts on all aspects of sex and sexuality, AIDS, prostitution, abortion, rape, and homosexuality. VAMPS AND TRAMPS also contains a blistering essay on Susan Sontag, an examination of Lady Di's popularity, Foucault body-of-work slams, and much more. Never boring, this book of breathless vitality is volcanic. It also contains book reviews, interviews, cartoons, and even her 'Spy' advice column, all executed in her signature bloodthirsty style.
Rating: 
Summary: Stale essays from a has-been
Review: Paglia seemed like a big deal back in the early 90s, and she herself kept *claiming* to be a big deal, but her third book was this sloppy collection of ephemera, and in the ten years since she has done nothing worth noting (except maybe some Salon columns). There are a few substantive essays here (though I no longer find them very compelling), but it's padded out with all sorts of minor writings she produced during the year or two after her second book made her famous. There are transcripts from her Crossfire appearances, a few silly advice columns she wrote - and a collection of every single cartoon that used her image or mentioned her. Normally, writers wait until they have made a really substantial achievement before they publish such minor stuff.
Rating:
Summary: Paglia as performance artist; worthy addition
Review: Quite simply, Paglia is one of the best literary/cultural critics of the past two decades. Her prose is jargon-free and perpetually potent; her subject range reveals perhaps the singlemost interdisciplinary mind of our generation. Unfortunately, her political "incorrectness" gives those unwilling to be challenged by her insights an excuse not to read her. The mere mention of her name in academic or women's studies circles is enough to insure condemnation of the offender--merely adding substance to her critique of the present state of these two institutions. She is both a shibboleth and a pariah. (I was publicly spanked for invoking her name at a national symposium; then later congratulated privately by several younger women.) Paglia has many personae. "Vamps and Tramps" may be a suitable introduction for some but it is actually more appropriate for the initiated Paglia-ite. "Vamps" is the "rap-music," "performance-artist" Paglia; "Sex, Art, and Decadence" is the frequently provocative and compelling popular essayist; "Sexual Personae" is the prolix, Nietzschean original thinker; her study of Hitchcock's "The Birds" is the disciplined yet passionate and provocative scholar. Any of these latter three volumes would be preferable as a starter for the reader wishing to discover why Camille can credibly claim the top position among current literary scholars and cultural critics.
Rating:
Summary: Paglia's rap-performance-artist persona (good addition).
Review: Quite simply, Paglia is the best literary critic of the pasttwo decades. Her prose is jargon-free and perpetuallypotent; her subject range reveals the most interdisciplin ary mind of our generation. Unfortunately, her political incorrectness gives those unwilling to be challenged by her difficulties an excuse not to read her. She is both a shibboleth and a pariah. The mere mention of her name in either feminist or academic circles is enough to insure condemnation of the offender--merely adding proof to her critique of the present state of these two institutions. "Vamps and Tramps" is the "rap music," "performance artist" Paglia, just as "Sex, Art, and Decadence" is the frequently provocative and compelling popular essayist and "Sexual Per- sonae" is the prolix, Nietzschean original thinker. Paglia has many personae. "Vamps and Tramps" may be a suitable introduction for some but it is actually more appropriate for the initiated Paglia-ites. Either of the first two volumes would be preferable as a starter for the reader who is serious about the Paglia who can claim the top position among current literary scholars and cultural critics.
Rating:
Summary: Stimulating reading
Review: This book was my introduction to Paglia. I had heard somepress about her when "Sexual Personae" came out, but ignoredit as being the usual hype. "Vamps and Tramps" changed my mind. In short, "Wow!" What an intellectual roller-coaster ride through the current landscape of gender and sexual politics. Fresh and brash, she challenges entrenched views, which are strongly held on campuses and in public today with little substantive challenge. I find the connections she makes with almost the entire cultural history of the western world truly wonderful: like a James Burke of pop culture. However, her breadth of coverage does do her in a little: in this book she calls for more rigor in the teaching of humanities in universities, but in another book (or was it an interview?) she praised Rush Limbaugh as being an original thinker. Nobody's perfect. Read this book!
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