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. 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.

Like many recent book introductions, it’s a lot of tell, not show, and reads like a tacked-on exercise that dilutes the book’s intention and intelligence. Heather Radke, Butts: A Backstory (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2022), 320 pages, ISBN: 978-1982135485, 29. The book’s introduction is weak and gratuitous, littered with quotes from unnamed women that feel forced. 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 result is a bold and exuberant leap for womankind. She’s smart about social history but falters when she gets personal, indulging feelings about her own rear and dating history that add little beyond dulling her feminist and modern take. With Butts: A Backstory, journalist and critic Heather Radke takes up these lies and takes them apart. Radke proves a witty, incisive observer, particularly when she steers clear of academic jargon. Radke is an eager, inventive reporter, relishing her search into greater understanding of why so many women, starting with herself, have such complicated relationships with their rears.

Castellitto Butts examines our most infamous body part through the lenses of racism and sexism, science and pop culture, fitness and fashion. Her interest lies in glutei maximi that tend toward maximal. Interview with Heather Radke, author of Butts NovemHeather Radke discusses a cheeky subject Interview by Linda M.

A plethora of fascinating details centered around a unifying theme. Episode 250: Doin the Butt with Heather Radke 'Butts are funny, but they also carry a tremendous amount of racial meaning, gender meaning. Butts: a Backstory is exactly the type of nonfiction I enjoy most. Though curious and wide-ranging in her investigation, Radke chose to leave some behinds behind. Then, author Heather Radke joins to talk about her book Butts: A Backstory, the cultural significance (and appropriation) of butts, and the freedom of being a horse girl.

Butts by Heather Radke