The best-selling author of If You Can't Live Without Me, Why Aren't You Dead Yet? offers insights into the age-old dance of the sexes and tells the hilarious truth about men, women, and nature. 50,000 first printing. $50,000 ad/promo. Tour. If a mad scientist somehow crossed Hunter S. Thompson with Dorothy Parker, the resultant writer stomping across the American scene would be something like Cynthia Heimel. She's smart, she's observant, she's outspoken, and she writes essays that make you bust a gut. You want opinions? She's got 'em. On nearly every subject. She's not afraid to offend. And the weird thing is, she happens to make a lot of sense. Columnist Heimel is irrepressible. Her last set of hilarious and feisty essays, Get Your Tongue Out of My Mouth, I'm Kissing You Good-bye (1993), was a blast of fresh air, as is this collection. Here Heimel continues her dissection of the war between the sexes, the ludicrousness of politics, and the joys of dogs. Yes, dogs. It figures that Heimel's a dog person: she's outgoing, outspoken, energetic, and affectionate, and she definitely has teeth. Some of her most piquant pieces are generational in nature. Critical of her own age group, she tells old hippies to stop whining and old feminists to give younger women a break; she then puckishly suggests polarity as a lifestyle. Heimel also has some very sharp and smart things to say about television, romance novels, racism, homophobia, political correctness (she'd rather see hate out in the open), being female as opposed to feminine, and male-bashing. We wish Heimel had a radio show so she could give Rush Limbaugh and his ilk a run for their money. Donna Seaman