Butts: A Backstory

Radke, Heather “Winning, cheeky, and illuminating….What appears initially as a folly with a look-at-this cover and title becomes, thanks to Radke’s intelligence and curiosity, something much meatier, entertaining, and wise.” –The Washington Post“Lively and thorough, Butts is the best kind of nonfiction.” —Esquire, Best Books of 2022 So FarA “carefully researched and reported work of cultural history” (The New York Times) that explores how one body part has come to mean so much—now one of the most anticipated books of 2022.Whether we love them or hate them, think they’re sexy, think they’re strange, consider them too big, too small, or anywhere in between, humans have a complicated relationship with butts. It is a body part unique to humans, critical to our evolution and survival, and yet it has come to signify so much more: sex, desire, comedy, shame. A woman’s butt, in particular, is forever being assessed, criticized, and objectified, from anxious self-examinations trying on jeans i