She does it even more -- with male photographers who, she winks, also led her to stories and allowed her to tag along on their assignments. For all the romantic overlay she gives her story, Kogan makes it clear that she screwed strategically. "The plan ... was fairly simple," Kogan writes of Pascal, a French photographer who invites her to join him in Peshawar, Pakistan, in 1988. "Since he had most of his journey paid for with assignments from various French and German magazines, and I, the ingenue just starting out, had zero in the way of assignments, I would take advantage of his free hotel room (and it was understood, his warm body) before finding a group of mujahadeen to take us ... into the heart of Afghanistan, to bear witness to the atrocities of war. Or something like that."

In this passage she's clearly trying to underline her initial gullibility, but the attempt falls flat. Not only is the blasé tone she strikes here and elsewhere embarrassing, it's disrespectful to those of us who take ourselves, and our careers, seriously. Kogan, who left photojournalism for TV news in 1992, and then left journalism altogether in 1998 to become a full-time mom, is not, contrary to the media buzz around the book, some kind of neo-fem heroine to women journalists. If anything, "Shutterbabe" only reinforces the myth that women have worked hard to dispel: that we use our sexuality for access or entree because we lack the basic skills to do it on our own. "We've all had our share of relationships, but I don't think you should ever use it to get ahead," says Newsweek's Donatella Lorch. "What's necessary in the field is winning the respect of your colleagues -- male and female," says Lorch, who covered wars in Afghanistan, Somalia and elsewhere for the New York Times and later for NBC News.

Women have fought long and hard to be considered valuable in the foreign arena. "You prove yourself by proving you're capable and not a weight around anyone's neck," Lorch says. "You prove it by showing that when things get dicey, you can stand on your own."

To her credit, Kogan learns quickly how to hold her own on assignments, without unduly leaning on men. Then again, her lack of preliminary research is often astounding. At one point, Kogan is sent to cover the anti-poaching battle in Zimbabwe's Zambezi River Valley, and arrives -- having fought off the advances of her one African source, whose help, I assume, she'd counted on -- without a tent, a map, a compass or any idea where the war was being fought.

But no matter what assignment she's describing, her concerns always center on what being a woman has meant to her. She is condescended to, called "little girl" (she's 5-foot-2) and often dismissed by her male colleagues; she's nearly raped by one of her lovers, slapped and called a "slut" by another. "How many times did I regret the enormous trouble my body caused me," she writes, "the way it bled and attracted assaults and made me an easy target for any man with a gripe and a will to act upon it?" It's something many women ask themselves, and journalists are no exception. But rather than using these moments in her book to explore the broader issues of sexism, she reverts to solipsistic "victim" flashbacks: a date rape at Harvard, a mugging in New York, sexual harassment throughout her life.

It's true that being a woman in the boys club means rarely having the luxury of leaving your gender behind. This doesn't mean inwardly freaking out, as Kogan does, when your box of tampons is inadvertently squashed by an AK-47-toting guerrilla as you barrel across the Hindu Kush in Afghanistan. It means ignoring, or brushing off, the random, and unwelcome, erection rubbing against your back while you're trying to work; trying to control your anger over the lack of access or freedom of movement women have throughout much of the Arab world; dealing calmly with the disrespect women often receive from men in professional situations in most of rural Africa, as well as parts of Asia, Latin America and just about everywhere else.

Women journalists are shut out of the salons of power all the time. In some corners of the globe, we'd have better luck throwing ourselves against a brick wall than interviewing or photographing a powerful man without male escorts. I've weathered several interviews with African leaders whose answers to my questions were directed not to me but to the male photographer I happened to be working with. This isn't unusual: Women might call the shots as producers or lead reporters, even speak the local language fluently, but nevertheless, the negotiations -- for access, travel, interviews, even food -- are done by the men on their team. How do women function professionally in this environment? It's frustrating, but they manage, and not usually by flirting or its converse, casting oneself as the victim, as Kogan so often does. Negotiating in these circumstances takes savvy, a basic understanding of other cultures and a sense of humor.

Maya Angelou reads from "The Heart of a Woman"