The Breast Book: An Intimate and Curious History

Introducing the chunky, obsessive book of Breasts.

Using over 600 illustrations and photographs, The Breast Book is about changing social mores and attitudes, from classical Greek statuary to the Victorian corset to Twiggy to Pamela Lee. The Breast Book is about envy and etiquette, differences-why 90 percent of French women do not breastfeed, for example-and adornment, including make-up, tattooing, nipple rings, and more. Breasts is about politics, art, religion, kitsch, and burning the bra. About perceptions-90 percent of men prefer a size C over a D. About high art-whether the humanist breast in Renaissance painting or its feminist send-up by photographer Cindy Sherman-and pop art, from Vargas girls to World War II bomber mascots to Madonna. The Breast Book is about getting them right-falsies, bust improvers, gadgets, pumps, and creams-and showing them off, like Jayne Mansfield's, immortalized in cement in front of Grauman's Chinese Theater.

A work of pop culture in itself, The Breast Book includes recurring visual elements like Time Lines and Great Moments of the Breast, plus Titbits-fascinating trivia running throughout.

Maura Spiegel is a professor of English at Columbia University who specializes in gender studies. She is the author of The Grim Reader and has written for the New York Times.

Lithe Sebesta is a journalist who has written for Vogue, Details, the New York Post, and the New York Times.