NEW YORK-BASED feminist intellectual JoAnn Wypijewski has spent two decades writing for The Nation and New Left Review magazines and in this book she focuses on the nuances underlying infamous sex and violence scandals pervading the US’s social fabric and the ways in which moral panic and a punitive culture combine.

In this selection of essays, perhaps misleadingly titled in a pitch for a feminist punch-up, Wypijewski’s fearless forensic method takes no prisoners — left, right, feminist or otherwise.

Her theme, spanning two decades, is the US’s undiminishable capacity for devastating cruelty while always maintaining its psychic innocence, citing James Baldwin’s dictum that “it is the innocence which constitutes the crime.”