A Book About Love
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- ¥1,900
発行者による作品情報
Number one bestselling science writer Jonah Lehrer explores the “only happiness that lasts”—love—in a book that “is interesting on nearly every page” (David Brooks, The New York Times Book Review).
Weaving together scientific studies from clinical psychologists, longitudinal studies of health and happiness, historical accounts and literary depictions, child-rearing manuals, and the language of online dating sites, Jonah Lehrer’s A Book About Love plumbs the most mysterious, most formative, most important impulse governing our lives.
Love confuses and compels us—and it can destroy and define us. It has inspired our greatest poetry, defined our societies and our beliefs, and governs our biology. From the way infants attach to their parents, to the way we fall in love with another person, to the way some find a love for God or their pets, to the way we remember and mourn love after it expires, this book focuses on research that attempts, even in glancing ways, to deal with the long-term and the everyday.
The most dangerous myth of love is that it’s easy, that we fall into the feeling and then the feeling takes care of itself. While we can easily measure the dopamine that causes the initial feelings of “falling” in love, the partnerships and devotions that last decades or longer remain a mystery. “Lehrer uses scores of detailed vignettes to traverse a complicated intellectual landscape, eventually arriving at modern theories of love…He is a talent” (USA TODAY), and A Book About Love decodes the set of skills necessary to cultivate a lifetime of love. Love, Lehrer argues, is not built solely on overwhelming passion, but, fascinatingly, on a set of skills to be cultivated over a lifetime.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Controversial writer Lehrer, whose last two books Imagine (2012) and How We Decide (2009) were recalled in 2012 on the basis of fabrication and plagiarism claims later acknowledged by the author, draws from scientific study, literature, history, and pop culture to address the vast significance of love in modern Western society. The discussion includes the "limerence" of Romeo and Juliet, the effects of divorce on children viewed through the autobiographical fiction of John Updike, and the effects of parental love on human happiness and the ability to adapt later in life. Giving space to less-conventional angles, Lehrer includes thoughts on the "entanglement of love and religion" and the position of God as a parental stand-in. The most emotionally compelling chapter depicts perseverance using disparate sources, such as a psychologist who survived the Holocaust through his devotion to helping others, and another chapter analyzes the performance of new recruits at West Point to make a larger point about love and adversity. Lehrer also provides tactics for successfully overcoming heartbreak, backed by scientific research and inspired by essayist Michel de Montaigne's love for and loss of his best friend. While Lehrer does not provide a wealth of original insight, he proves himself an able curator of information (thankfully with plenty of attribution this time around).
