Book - Breasts: A Natural and Unnatural History
Out in May 2012 from Norton
An engaging expose about an incredible, life-giving organ and its imperiled modern fate.
Feted and fetishized, the breast is an evolutionary masterpiece. But in the modern world, the breast is changing. Breasts are getting bigger, arriving earlier and attracting newfangled chemicals. Increasingly, the odds are stacked against us in the struggle with breast cancer – even among men. What makes breasts so mercurial – and so vulnerable?
The intrepid science journalist Florence Williams sets out to uncover the latest science from the fields of anthropology, biology, and medicine. Her investigation follows the life cycle of the breast from puberty to pregnancy to menopause, bringing her from a plastic surgeon’s office where she learns about the importance of cup size in Texas to a lab where she discovers the presence of environmental toxins in her own breast milk. Along with being informative, Breasts is highly entertaining. Did you know that breasts are bigger than ever? That breast milk contains substances similar to cannabis? Or that it’s sold on the internet for 262 times the price of oil? Endowed with a witty and inquisitive voice, Williams explores where breasts came from, where they have ended up, and what we can do to save them.
"Be brave, buy this book, and withstand the giggles and sniggers of your friends. For here is a wonderful history, stretching across hundreds of millions of years, of an astonishingly complex part of the human body. Williams weaves together research on nutrition, cancer, psychology, and even structural engineering to create a fascinating portrait of the breast: that singular gland that gave us, as mammals, our very name." —Carl Zimmer, author of Parasite Rex and Evolution: The Triumph of an Idea
“Florence Williams's double-D talents as a reporter and writer lift this book high above the genre and separate it from the ranks of ordinary science writing. Breasts is illuminating, surprising, clever, important. Williams is an author to savor and look forward to.” —Mary Roach, author of Stiff and Packing for Mars
"As a mammalogist and a nursing mother, I thought I knew everything there was to know about breasts and their exquisite communion with the ecological world. I was wrong. But I never laughed so hard while learning so much. Thank you, Florence Williams, for all the delightful--and possibly life-saving--knowledge these pages contain. The true story of breasts, revealed at last!" —Sandra Steingraber, Ph.D., author, Living Downstream: An Ecologist's Personal Investigation of Cancer and the Environment and Raising Elijah: Protecting Our Children in an Age of Environmental Crisis
“A wonderful and entertaining tour through the evolution, biology and cultural aspects of the organ that defines us as mammals!” —Susan Love, MD, author of Dr Susan Love's Breast Book
"I certainly didn't think I could appreciate breasts more than I already did. This is a truly outstanding book! Written with humor and humanity, it is essential reading for anyone wishing to understand the fascinating intersections between personal health, toxic chemicals, western culture and the medical profession. I couldn't put it down." --Bruce Lourie, co-author, Slow Death by Rubber Duck: The Secret Danger of Everyday Things