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A Boob's Life

How America's Obsession Shaped Me...and You

Published by Pegasus Books
Distributed by Simon & Schuster

About The Book

A Boob’s Life explores the surprising truth about women’s most popular body part with vulnerable, witty frankness and true nuggets of American culture that will resonate with everyone who has breasts—or loves them.

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Author Leslie Lehr wants to talk about boobs. She’s gone from size AA to DDD and everything between, from puberty to motherhood, enhancement to cancer, and beyond. And she’s not alone—these are classic life stages for women today.

At turns funny and heartbreaking, A Boob’s Life explores both the joys and hazards inherent to living in a woman’s body. Lehr deftly blends her personal narrative with national history, starting in the 1960s with the women’s liberation movement and moving to the current feminist dialogue and what it means to be a woman. Her insightful and clever writing analyzes how America’s obsession with the female form has affected her own life’s journey and the psyche of all women today.

From her prize-winning fiction to her viral New York Times Modern Love essay, exploring the challenges facing contemporary women has been Lehr’s life-long passion. A Boob’s Life, her first project since breast cancer treatment, continues this mission, taking readers on a wildly informative, deeply personal, and utterly relatable journey. No matter your gender, you’ll never view this sexy and sacred body part the same way again.

About The Author

Leslie Lehr is a prize-winning author, screenwriter, essayist, and story consultant. She is the author of 66 Laps, Wife Goes On, and What a Mother Knows, and her essays have been published in the New York Times Modern Love column and Huffington Post. She is a member of PEN, the Authors Guild, WGA, Women In Film, and the Women’s Leadership Council. She lives in Southern California.

Product Details

  • Publisher: Pegasus Books (July 6, 2023)
  • Length: 384 pages
  • ISBN13: 9781639365395

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Raves and Reviews

"As women we are always asking ourselves, are we enough? Leslie Lehr's witty, wise, and sometimes heartbreaking memoir, A Boob's Life, uses our relationship with breasts, and the ways others define us through them, to explore what it means to live in a woman's body. Original, thought-provoking, and with an elegant sense of humor, A Boob's Life is a must-read."

– Salma Hayek

"Lehr combines stores from her own life with cultural analysis to illuminate our society's fixation on the feminine form, breasts in particular, and how that focus shapes us all."

– People Magazine,"Best New Books"

"You might as well get to know the sacks of fat and tissue that form the major locus of human life, and there's no better tour guide than Leslie Lehr, a witty writer and breast cancer survivor, who holds nothing back. This is part memoir, part manifesto, part history."

– Glamour Magazine, "10 Best New Books to Read This Month"

"A serious and provocative book with enough lightness to keep the pages turning."

– Kirkus Reviews

"Novelist and screenwriter Lehr blends memoir, history, and cultural criticism in this witty and incisive look at American attitudes toward women’s breasts. Lehr’s appealing sense of humor runs throughout, as does her sharp analysis of broader social issues. Lehr’s engrossing and empathetic account will appeal to women of all ages."

– Publishers Weekly

"A unique blend of memoir and social history that should have broad appeal to anyone who has breasts or has ever worn a bra."

– Library Journal

"When I was a little girl dreaming of having breasts, I had no idea about the non-stop ogling and boob worship I was in for as a woman in America. Leslie Lehr explains it all in this funny, passionate, upbeat book. You’ll never look at yourself in the mirror the same way again. Wow!”

– Leslie Morgan Steiner, New York Times best-selling author of 'The Naked Truth,' 'Crazy Love,' and 'Mommy Wars'

"Deeply personal, wisely funny, and moving. This isn't just a fantastic, intimate memoir about how cancer, survival, and life in general changed Lehr's entire relationship with her body parts, but an exploration of how our breast-obsessed culture, women's lib, and men, have shaped our feelings about breasts. Insightful, delightful, and eye-opening."

– Caroline Leavitt, New York Times Bestselling author of Pictures of You and With or Without You

"A powerful emotinoal chronicle of a young girl's budding awareness of the power of breasts; a young woman's negotiations as an object of male desire; a mother's loving perspective on her children's food source, and an adult woman's struggle with a disease that could take her life. An insightful, comprehensive, modern-day manifesto that champions a woman's totality."

– Hope Edelman, bestselling author of Motherless Daughter's and The AfterGrief

"Poignant, powerful, and ultimately hopeful—who would think a breast could properly capture the history of women in our country? A Boob's Life makes you realize women in America have been through a lot. That you have been through a lot. Equality must be the next wave. It can't come soon enough."

– Kaira Rouda, international and USA TODAY bestselling author

"Told with heart, humor, hope, and a whole lot of sassiness. Lehr fearlessly and candidly brings us along on her breast cancer journey and beyond. Have a box of tissues at the ready as you read this deeply personal memoir. You'll need them to wipe away tears of heartache and laughter."

– Heather Gudenkauf, New York Times bestselling author of The Weight of Silence and This is How I Lied

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