"Delightful philosophy and wickedly wonderful advice. . . Prioleau is almost incapable of writing a dreary sentence. Seductress combines two words rarely put together: fun and feminist."

-USA Today

" [Think] Of hot loins, unbridled ecstasy, imperious flirt-goddesses and men begging for mercy . . . in this glossy steam-heated analysis. Prioleau is a scholar and a teacher"

-New York Times

"Prioleau's fascinating new book, which features profiles of 50 of the world's most famous seductreses. . . makes it clear that physical beauty was not—and is not—a required attribute in the arts of seduction."

-San Francisco Chronicle

"Telling wonderfully peripatetic tales of self-possessed sirens and seductresses throughout the eons, Prioleau makes a strong case for women to take back their ancestral birthright of sexy wholeness. . . . wildly engaging reading and faultless scholarship."

-Publisher's Weekly

"Both insightful and entertaining, this book is essential for both academic and public libraries."

-Library Journal

"Incredibly well-written"

-Chicago Sun-Times

"The alluring Betsy Prioleau entices with her siren's song of the Seductress, featuring love maestros such as Cleopatra, Lola Montez, and the infamous ménage-maker Violet Gordon Woodhouse."

-Vanity Fair

"An exuberant tribute to female physical, intellectual and spiritual power, Prioleau's book is a feast of language and ideas that spans centuries."

-Bookpage

"[Prioleau] is to be applauded, as modern women need to believe that we can excel intellectually and materially and still have men falling at our feet."

-Washington Post

"Regardless of age or looks, women are sexually charged power mavens capable of taking control and fomenting change. . . Betsy Prioleau's sharp scholarship makes for entertaining reading."

-Richmond Times Dispatch

"Historian and English professor Prioleau has gathered together history's sexiest vixens and given them a delicious voice. [The] thoroughly researched mini-biographies convincingly argue that men are drawn to brave, confident women."

-Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

"A ravishing book on every level--scholarship dipped in rich chocolate language, stories delicious as bon bons, and recipes both sweet and tart to burn through men."

-Gail Sheehy,
author of Passages,
Hillary's Choice and The New Middletown

"Betsy Prioleau''s witty and impassioned celebration of the seductress is an eye-opener, a romp through history showing powerful, sexy women that should put us all to shame—all us wimpish women and defensive men—for ignoring these avatars of freedom and enlightened delight. Combining scholarship and high-style polemic, Prioleau suggests that it's not too late for us to add the arts of love to our arsenal and put the femme fatale back into feminist!"

-Molly Haskell,
author of From Reverence to Rape:
the Treatment of Women in the Movies

"Sassy, sexy, brash, and boldly written, SEDUCTRESS will provoke you, comfort you, astonish you, infuriate you—and turn you on. This book itself is a seductress, for out of Betsy Prioleau's velvet scholarship steps a living gallery of portraits, mythical and historical embodiments of her post-feminist mission: to restore the vigor of allure to its proper female priority. They all make spectacular entrances at Prioleau's party of the centuries, from the Venus of Willendorf to Madame de Maintenon, from Mary Wollstonecraft to Grace Hartigan, and each helps Prioleau lift her little finger to flip the idea of What Men Want on its head. Forget the bimbo's rapt attention, these adventurers instinctively use their own intelligences and native mistrust of traditions—as well as their own all-too-human bodies, however out of sync with the notions of beauty of their times—to seduce the world with their acts of self-creation. And in their tradition Prioleau becomes the creatrix who transforms the idea of a love potion into a tonic for every woman's well being."

-Molly Peacock,
author of Paradise, Piece by Piece
and Original Love: Poems

"SEDUCTRESS is seductive: instantly engaging, entirely witty, and intellectually responsible, Prioleau has given us a portrait of women who embraced sexualized femininity as a weapon, a wile, and way of life. These broads put the 'boa' in 'feather boa.' Their meticulously documented stories prove, once and for all, that if good girls go to heaven, bad girls go everywhere."

-Gina Barreca,
Professor of English Literature at the University of Connecticut
and author of They Used to Call Me Snow White... But I Drifted

"While it is often feared that women lose themselves in love, giving away their autonomy, Prioleau presents a different erotic plot line. In this thoroughly engaging work, Prioleau rewrites the book of love, drawing on the scintillating stories of world class seductresses, she demonstrates how they find empowerment in erotic life and love. Prioleau's compelling argument is that women's mastery in love is kin to other kinds of mastery and control; it expands our sense of worth. Love and the act of love can be empowering rather than depleting."

-Ethel Spector Person, M.D.,
author of Feeling Strong
and The Sexual Century