Butts

brain that just won't quit. A funny and studious storyteller, the Radiolab reporter leads us on an eye-opening journey that starts in Kenya 1.9 million years ago, where 'the first known hominid with a butt' enters the fossil record, and marches through centuries of changing art, fashion, and cultural norms to the modern era where the dreams of Sir Mix-a-Lot are finally being realized. But what is a butt, biologically speaking? And how did it become such a hot-button issue in conversations about race, gender, and class? The butt, as it turns out, occupies a prominent space in the human story even though, as Radke points out, we rarely get a good look at our own." -The Philadelphia Inquirer

"Fascinating and frank... [with] top- notch reportage, assured and respectful voice and invitation to butt-centric contemplation... [Radke] guides readers on an impressively well-researched tour of butts throughout history, beginning with a functional analysis (hominids and horses take center stage) and ultimately alighting in the present (twerking, social media and celebrity butts)." -BookPage (starred review)

"Radke thoughtfully, and without judgment, addresses the complexities and contradictions that this body part evokes and delves into some surprising topics that may spark further curiosity in readers. Her captivating writing and witty approach to a taboo topic will appeal to a variety of nonfiction readers, particularly those interested in cultural history and gender studies. . . A fun, fascinating, and surprisingly empowering exploration of the history and cultural significance of the butt." -Library Journal (starred review)

"Whip-smart. . . Marked by Radke's vivacious writing, candid self-reflections, and sophisticated cultural analyses, this is an essential study of 'ideas and prejudices' about the female body." -Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"Heather Radke's social history of female butts promises to be a deeply researched and thoroughly fascinating look (ogle?) at a body part that has long captured the cultural imagination. Radke talks to evolutionary biologists, models, and fitness gurus, and dives into the history of the racist objectification of women like Sarah Baartmann and Josephine Baker in an effort to understand our complex relationship with the butt." -LitHub

"Delving into this history, Radke provides fresh insights into why butts hold such sway over society-and what that says about our relationships to race, class, gender, and power." -TIME Magazine

"How did butts become both sexualized and mythologized? Why do certain body types fall in and out of fashion? Who even makes those decisions? In this cheeky (sorry) nonfiction debut, Radiolab reporter Heather Radke examines society's obsession with derrieres and how larger ideas about race, control, liberation, and power affect our most private feelings about ourselves and others." -PureWow

"Here comes a story on the evolution and sensationalization of, you guessed it, butts! Radke takes a deep dive into the most emphasized human body part, taking a look at its physical evolution in relation to survival, as well as the part it has played in popular culture throughout the years. And you know Sir Mix-a-Lot's name will come up a time or two." -The Every Girl

"Cheeky and entertaining." -BookRiot

"An ingenious cultural study." -The Globe & Mail (Canada)

"As women we have always been asked-been told-to lie about our bodies. Our culture subjects them to laws, myths, race bigotries, class pieties and sexual anxieties. With Butts: A Backstory, journalist and critic Heather Radke takes up these lies and takes them apart. The result is a bold and exuberant leap for womankind." -Margo Jefferson, Pulitzer Prize-winning critic and author of Negroland and Constructing a Nervous System

"Heather Radke's Butts: A Backstory is rigorous, generous, and utterly compelling. The range of its research is thrillingly expansive-from the deep origins of twerk to the sleek silhouettes of Coco Chanel, from the 'mono-bum' of the Victorian bustle to the brilliant subversions of drag-allowing Radke a range of fascinating vantage points from which to explore the histories our bodies hold. With humor, intelligence, outrage, and compassion, Radke excavates the social and historical forces that haunt our most ordinary moments. This fiercely intelligent, frequently witty 'backstory' is a journey through centuries of history that will transform how you think about the butt, and-quite possibly-how you consider the value of exploring those parts of ourselves we don't take seriously enough." -Leslie Jamison, bestselling author of Make It Scream Make It Burn and The Empathy Exams

"From the first, I have been delighted and deeply informed by Heather Radke's writing. She has a mind like no other. This book contributes not only a great deal to the complicated discussion around women's bodies, it illuminates what unites us all: being human." -Hilton Als, Pulitzer Prize-winning critic and author of White Girls

"Juicy and scholarly, Butts is a heck of a ride. At turns troubling, wild, painful, surprising and flat-out fun, Radke's reporting unearths a set of largely overlooked historical figures with outsized effects on cultural evolutions, from the discovery of the first hominid butt, to the creation of the frightening statues Norm and Norma, to the gruesome tale behind the bustle, these gripping stories work together to elucidate the crushing web of cultural, commercial, and pseudoscientific forces shaping our very private senses of discomfort, envy, and belonging. Her book is teeming with rebels-drag queens and fat activists and twerkers-who flip supremacy the bird and offer another path through. Don't let the cute cover fool you, inside is a serious feat of reporting and scholarship." -Lulu Miller, bestselling author of Why Fish Don't Exist

"A deeply thought, rigorously researched, and riveting history of human butts - Radke knows exactly when to approach her subject with levity and when with gravity. A pitch perfect debut." -Melissa Febos, bestselling author of Girlhood and Body Work

"Heather Radke takes a subject so familiar as to be practically invisible and trains a sharp reportorial eye on it, touring the reader through the centuries of cultural history that shape our feelings about what's filling out our jeans. She has amassed a trove of surprising and fascinating case studies, from bustles and the 'Hottentot Venus' to flappers, fit models, and Sir Mixalot. Butts is everything you want a piece of reportage to be: smart, creative, searching, deeply researched, political, and fun." -Jordan Kisner, author of Thin Places