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| A Natural History Of Love | 
| Author: Diane Ackerman
Publisher: Vintage
Category: Book
List Price: $14.95
Buy Used: $0.73
You Save: $14.22 (95%)
New (35) Collectible (2) from $4.99
Avg. Customer Rating:  16 reviews
Sales Rank: 326267
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 384
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.7
Dimensions (in): 8.1 x 5.5 x 0.9
ISBN: 0679761837
Dewey Decimal Number: 306.7
EAN: 9780679761839
ASIN: 0679761837
Publication Date: February 21, 1995
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
The bestselling author of A Natural History of the Senses now explores the allure of adultery, the appeal of aphrodisiacs, and the cult of the kiss. Enchantingly written and stunningly informed, this "audaciously brilliant romp through the world of romantic love" (Washington Post Book World) is the next best thing to love itself.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 11 more reviews...
 Love Through the Ages May 18, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
Diane Ackerman has written many interesting books and this one is especially well researched. She begins the book with stories of Egypt and Cleopatra and then explores the topic of Medieval Knights and the truth about courtly love. She illustrates her points lavishly and unlike many of her other books, she stays close to her main topic with minimal diversions. Although when discussing Freud she can't help herself and she seems to feel compelled to tell his whole life story. The story of Abelard and Heloise is sad but well told. Diane sheds light on many of the famous love stories of the past.
In the first half of the book she deals mostly with romantic love and then she takes various journeys into specific types of love. The love of cars, horses and flying is interesting but she reaches her most poetic explanations when she talks about kissing. There is also interesting information on courtship, marriage, religious love, men and mermaids, the evolution of the face, divorce, aphrodisiacs and modern love.
This book will intrigue you if you enjoy knowing interesting facts, like the origin of the wedding dress or why an X symbolizes a kiss. This book also has some good information on oxytocin and phenylethylamine. Diane Ackerman also gives insight into mental illness when she says: "The mentally ill are people who cannot regulate the conflicting emotions they feel." Since I believe in creation I did get weary of the constant references to evolution, however the book is worth reading no matter what you believe.
~The Rebecca Review
Historical Evidence that Humans have been Craving Insanity a Long Long LONG Time June 1, 2006
2 out of 4 found this review helpful
A chronicle of just how insane the human species gets when their brain gets a serving of emotional cocaine known as the illusion of romantic love. People are just the love object. The emotions that have one acting out-of-the ordinary are outcomes of a brain on drugs.... aka temporary insanity. The supposed yearning humans often feel are simple withdrawal symptoms akin to those being weened off morphine.
What's love got to do with it? NOTHING!
"LOVE IS THE GREAT INTANGIBLE......." May 10, 2005
8 out of 9 found this review helpful
Lorenz Hart wrote, "I wish I were in love again." "Let's do it, let's fall in love," advised Cole Porter. No other subject has inspired as many songs, poems, books or plays as ever appealing, sometimes elusive love. And here is Diane Ackerman to tell us all about it.
"Love is the great intangible" is the way this volume begins, and it is equally unfathomable after we finish reading, but there's much information and great good fun in between. Beginning with the history of love in ancient Egypt through Rome, the Middle Ages and up to the present, the author explores the historical, cultural and biological roots of that which makes the world go round.
Rich with insights into traditions and little known facts, "Love's Customs" may well be one of the most fascinating chapters. For instance, it was the medieval Italians who favored diamond rings because "of their superstition that diamonds were created from the flames of love." Soldiers of ancient Sparta hosted the first stag parties. The white wedding dress was first won by Anne of Brittany in 1499 when she married Louis XII of France. Both bride and groom wore a blue band around the bottom of their wedding garments in biblical times, which is where the idea of the bride's "something blue" originated.
"A Natural History of Love" is a rare literary work in that it is both a well researched scholarly text, terrific reading, and offers an insight that probably applies to each one of us.
- Gail Cooke
 Counting the ways of the heart. November 8, 2003
8 out of 8 found this review helpful
"We have the great fortune to live on a planet abounding with humans, plants, and animals," poet Diane Ackerman (A NATURAL HISTORY OF THE SENSES, 1990), writes in her Introduction to this book; "and I often marvel at the strange tasks evolution sets them. Of all the errands life seems to be running, of all the mysteries that enchant us, love is my favorite" (p. xxiii). Once again demonstrating her talent for blending the disciplines of history, anthropology, psychology, literature and natural science, Ackerman turns her attention here to the subject of love, "the great intangible" (p. xvii). In counting the ways of the heart, she reveals through a historical survey of Egypt, Greece, Rome, the Middle Ages, and Modern times that our attitudes about love are truly as old as the pyramids, and she also examines the evolution, psychology, and chemistry of love, the differences between men and women when it comes to love, monogamy and adultery, love-thwarted attachments, and aphrodisiacs and eroticism. While it may not live up to the standard Ackerman set in A NATURAL HISTORY OF THE SENSES, in addressing what it means to love from a variety of different perspectives, this book is nevertheless quite fascinating. G. Merritt
clear and readable May 30, 2003
15 out of 17 found this review helpful
I read this to be entertained, and I was. Like her other books, this one was clearly written, easy on the eyes, clever, witty, and packed with interesting out-of-the-way information. It's a pleasant and well-composed discourse through the history of romantic love in the West. If you come to it from that point of view, you might like it. If a criterion of a good read is that the author inspires in you some of the emotions she describes, then most of the book succeeded for me: at times I wondered what she'd be like on a date.... Parts of the book get into human instincts. While there's evidence for these--the rooting instinct in babies, for instance--we need to bear in mind that human instincts are heavily modified by time, place, and personality. The maternal instinct, for example, is painted in ideal colors: the loving mother mirroring her baby. We've all seen that; but some of us have also met mothers who hate their children (or, worse, feel indifferent toward them) and whose maternal instinct never sees the daylight. We shouldn't follow Freud's old 19th Century slippage from psychology into biology unless we're prepared to ignore the social and spiritual roots of human motivation. I appreciate the author's knack for collecting a lot of information on a given topic, then giving us the best fruits of her learnings in breezy and often poetic language.
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