Whether it’s on the beach blanket or the porch swing—or, for those with little or no vacation time, the commuter train—summertime provides a kind of natural blank slate. Maybe it’s because all your favorite shows are in reruns and the summer movies leave you cold, but suddenly you feel you have time to embark upon…

When the book came out in early March, few seemed to notice anything wrong. The first dozen reader reviews on its Amazon page were uniformly glowing, with many mentioning how they’d long admired the author’s blog. It’s a Jungle Out There: The Feminist Survival Guide to Politically Inhospitable Environments is Amanda Marcotte’s first book, but the author is a…