<DIV><p>The <I>Kama Sutra</I> gives detailed instructions on how to spank it. Contemporary Italians touch it for luck before placing a bet. Americans are having it cosmetically enhanced at rates approaching breast enlargement surgery. <B>The female butt, tush, <I>culo</I>, or derrière has always inspired awe, fantasy, and slavish devotion.</B><br> &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Curiously, its primary purpose is functional rather than aesthetic: butts balance our bodies while running, according to biologists. But ask any pygophiliac&mdash;as fundament fans are clinically termed&mdash;and you'll get the same answer: female hindquarters exist to please the eye, the hands, and parts south. A pert posterior causes instant arousal, as Zora Neale Hurston observed in<I> Their Eyes Were Watching God</I>: &quot;The men noticed her firm buttocks like she had grape fruits in her hip pockets.&quot; Or, as rapper Sir Mix-a-lot proclaimed, &quot;My anaconda don't want none, unless you&rsquo;ve got buns, hun.&quot;<br> &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Having all but disappeared from western culture in the breast-obsessed second half of the 20th century, the fully formed fanny is currently enjoying a massive resurgence, attributed by some to American actress <B>Jennifer Lopez</B><B>,</B> by others to the rise of booty-centric hip hop culture. Yet this rage for shapely butts is nothing new. The ancient Greeks worshipped at the temple of Aphrodite Kallipygos, Goddess of the Beautiful Buttocks, while a womanly rump has always been an object of worship in most of the southern hemisphere.<br> &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; <B><I>The Big Butt Book</I> explores this perennial fascination with female booty</B>&mdash;from small and taut to large and sumptuous&mdash;in the fourth installment of Dian Hanson's critically acclaimed body parts series. Over 400 photos from 1900 to the present day are contextualized by interviews with porn icon <B>John (Buttman) Stagliano</B>, filmmaker <B>Tinto Brass</B>, artist <B>Robert Crum</B><B>b</B>,&nbsp;bootylicious butt queens <B>Buffie The Body</B>, <B>Coco</B> and Brazil's <B>Watermelon Woman</B>, plus <B>Eve Howard</B> and her life-long spanking obsession.</p></DIV>