The Curious History of Love

The Curious History of Love PDF Author: Jean-Claude Kaufmann
Publisher: Polity
ISBN: 0745651542
Category : Family & Relationships
Languages : en
Pages : 185

Get Book

Book Description
The one emotion that matters most to many people is the one about which social thinkers rarely speak - love. For many people, love is the thing that matters most in their lives: they are searching for love, hoping to find in love a kind of happiness that they cannot find in their work or by surrounding themselves with material goods. But where does this peculiar and powerful blending together of love and happiness come from, and why do we find it such a compelling idea today? In this short book Jean-Claude Kaufmann offers a fresh account of the history of a feeling unlike any other. The modern idea of love as passion was born in the 12th century but it was marginalized by the rise of a kind of instrumental, calculating reason that became increasingly central to modern societies. As calculating reason began to encroach on the personal domain, many individuals sought to escape from it, searching for happiness elsewhere. As our societies become dominated by calculating reason and selfish individualism, we search elsewhere for the kind of happy love that will heal all our wounds. This is why we experience so many changes of heart in our personal lives: at times we are coldly calculating and then, a few moments later, we sacrifice ourselves to love without a second thought. Written by one of France’s leading sociologists, this highly readable book sheds new light on love and happiness and will resonate with many readers.

The Curious History of Love

The Curious History of Love PDF Author: Jean-Claude Kaufmann
Publisher: Polity
ISBN: 0745651542
Category : Family & Relationships
Languages : en
Pages : 185

Get Book

Book Description
The one emotion that matters most to many people is the one about which social thinkers rarely speak - love. For many people, love is the thing that matters most in their lives: they are searching for love, hoping to find in love a kind of happiness that they cannot find in their work or by surrounding themselves with material goods. But where does this peculiar and powerful blending together of love and happiness come from, and why do we find it such a compelling idea today? In this short book Jean-Claude Kaufmann offers a fresh account of the history of a feeling unlike any other. The modern idea of love as passion was born in the 12th century but it was marginalized by the rise of a kind of instrumental, calculating reason that became increasingly central to modern societies. As calculating reason began to encroach on the personal domain, many individuals sought to escape from it, searching for happiness elsewhere. As our societies become dominated by calculating reason and selfish individualism, we search elsewhere for the kind of happy love that will heal all our wounds. This is why we experience so many changes of heart in our personal lives: at times we are coldly calculating and then, a few moments later, we sacrifice ourselves to love without a second thought. Written by one of France’s leading sociologists, this highly readable book sheds new light on love and happiness and will resonate with many readers.

The Curious History of Dating

The Curious History of Dating PDF Author: Nichi Hodgson
Publisher: Robinson
ISBN: 1472138058
Category : Humor
Languages : en
Pages : 256

Get Book

Book Description
A LIGHT-HEARTED, INTIMATE AND EMPHATICALLY FEMINIST HISTORY OF DATING 'A new approach to romance . . . The heroines of Regency novels could teach today's young women a trick or two' Sunday Times 'Entertaining and well-researched' The Lady 'Pacey, intelligent and authoritative with bags of wit' Law Gazette 'A whistle-stop tour of dating through history' History Extra What if Mr Darcy had simply been able to swipe right? Dating has never been easy. The road to true love has always been rutted with heartbreak, but do we have it any easier today? How did Victorians 'come out'? How did love blossom in war-torn Europe? And why did 80s' video-dating never take off? Bursting with little-known facts and tantalising tales of lovelorn men and besotted women, Nichi Hodgson's intriguing history of amorous relationships, from enamoured Georgians to frenziedly swiping millennials (and everyone in between) may leave you grateful that you live - and love - today.

The History of Love: A Novel

The History of Love: A Novel PDF Author: Nicole Krauss
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393342840
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 272

Get Book

Book Description
ONE OF THE MOST LOVED NOVELS OF THE DECADE. A long-lost book reappears, mysteriously connecting an old man searching for his son and a girl seeking a cure for her widowed mother's loneliness. Leo Gursky taps his radiator each evening to let his upstairs neighbor know he’s still alive. But it wasn’t always like this: in the Polish village of his youth, he fell in love and wrote a book…Sixty years later and half a world away, fourteen-year-old Alma, who was named after a character in that book, undertakes an adventure to find her namesake and save her family. With virtuosic skill and soaring imaginative power, Nicole Krauss gradually draws these stories together toward a climax of "extraordinary depth and beauty" (Newsday).

Love Entwined

Love Entwined PDF Author: Helen Sheumaker
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN: 9780812203400
Category : Crafts & Hobbies
Languages : en
Pages : 286

Get Book

Book Description
Using a wide array of evidence drawn from poetry, fiction, diaries, letters, and examples of hairwork, Love Entwined traces the widespread popularity of the craft from the late eighteenth to the early twentieth century.

A Curious History of Sex

A Curious History of Sex PDF Author: Kate Lister
Publisher: Unbound Publishing
ISBN: 1783528060
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 432

Get Book

Book Description
This is not a comprehensive study of every sexual quirk, kink and ritual across all cultures throughout time, as that would entail writing an encyclopaedia. Rather, this is a drop in the ocean, a paddle in the shallow end of sex history, but I hope you will get pleasantly wet nonetheless. The act of sex has not changed since people first worked out what went where, but the ways in which society dictates how sex is culturally understood and performed have varied significantly through the ages. Humans are the only creatures that stigmatise particular sexual practices, and sex remains a deeply divisive issue around the world. Attitudes will change and grow – hopefully for the better – but sex will never be free of stigma or shame unless we acknowledge where it has come from. Based on the popular research project Whores of Yore, and written with her distinctive humour and wit, A Curious History of Sex draws upon Dr Kate Lister’s extensive knowledge of sex history. From medieval impotence tests to twentieth-century testicle thefts, from the erotic frescoes of Pompeii, to modern-day sex doll brothels, Kate unashamedly roots around in the pants of history, debunking myths, challenging stereotypes and generally getting her hands dirty. This fascinating book is peppered with surprising and informative historical slang, and illustrated with eye-opening, toe-curling and meticulously sourced images from the past. You will laugh, you will wince and you will wonder just how much has actually changed.

The People's Act Of Love

The People's Act Of Love PDF Author: James Meek
Publisher: Canongate Books
ISBN: 1847673759
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 417

Get Book

Book Description
1919, Siberia . . . Deep in the unforgiving landscape a town lies under military rule, awaiting the remorseless assault of Bolsheviks along the Trans-Siberian railway. One night a stranger, Samarin, appears from the woods with a tale of escape from an Arctic prison, insisting a cannibal is on his trail. Only Anna, a beautiful young widow, trusts his story. When a local shaman is found dead suspicion and terror engulf the isolated community, which harbours a secret of its own . . .

The Phone Book

The Phone Book PDF Author: Ammon Shea
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1101444118
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 184

Get Book

Book Description
Read Ammon Shea's blogs and other content on the Penguin Community. A surprising, lively, and rich history of that ubiquitous doorstop that most of us take for granted. Ammon Shea is not your typical thirtysomething book enthusiast. After reading the Oxford English Dictionary from cover to cover (and living to write about it in Reading the OED), what classic, familiar, but little-read book would he turn to next? Yes, the phone book. With his signature combination of humor, curiosity, and passion for combing the dustbins of history, Shea offers readers a guided tour into the surprising, strange, and often hilarious history of the humble phone book. From the first printed version in 1878 (it had fifty listings and no numbers) to the phone book's role in presidential elections, Supreme Court rulings, Senate filibusters, abstract art, subversive poetry, circus sideshows, criminal investigations, mental-health diagnoses, and much more, this surprising volume reveals a rich and colorful story that has never been told-until now.

Loving Literature

Loving Literature PDF Author: Deidre Lynch
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022618370X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 335

Get Book

Book Description
Of the many charges laid against contemporary literary scholars, one of the most commonand perhaps the most woundingis that they simply don't love books. And while the most obvious response is that, no, actually the profession of literary studies does acknowledge and address personal attachments to literature, that answer risks obscuring a more fundamental question: Why should they? That question led Deidre Shauna Lynch into the historical and cultural investigation ofLoving Literature. How did it come to be that professional literary scholars are expected not just to study, but tolove literature, and to inculcate that love in generations of students? What Lynch discovers is that books, and the attachments we form to them, have long played a role in the formation of private lifethat the love of literature, in other words, is neither incidental to, nor inextricable from, the history of literature. Yet at the same time, there is nothing self-evident or ahistorical about our love of literature: our views of books as objects of affection have clear roots in late eighteenth-century and nineteenth-century publishing, reading habits, and domestic history. While never denying the very real feelings that warm our relationship to books, Loving Literature nonetheless serves as a riposte to those who use the phrase the love of literature” as if its meaning were transparent, its essence happy and healthy. Lynch writes, It is as if those on the side of love of literature had forgotten what literary texts themselves say about love's edginess and complexities.” With this masterly volume, Lynch restores those edges, and allows us to revel in those complexities.

Terrors of the Table

Terrors of the Table PDF Author: Walter Gratzer
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191578622
Category : Health & Fitness
Languages : en
Pages : 306

Get Book

Book Description
Terrors of the Table is an absorbing account of the struggle to find the necessary ingredients of a healthy diet, and the fads and quackery that have always waylaid the unwary and the foolish when it comes to the matter of food and health. Walter Gratzer tells the tale of nutrition's heroes, heroines and charlatans with characteristic crispness and verve. We find an array of colourful personalities, from the distinguished but quarrelsome Liebig, to the enterprising Lydia Pinkham. But we also find the slow recognition that the lack of vital ingredients can cause terrible illnesses - scurvy, rickets, beriberi. These diseases stalked the poor in the West even into the 20th century, and scandalously remain in poorer parts of the world today. The narrative stretches from classical times to the modern day and gives a valuable historical perspective to our current understanding. It also highlights some of the problems faced by the developed world regarding health today - in particular diabetes and obesity. And despite our far greater understanding of what our body needs, there are still many who would fall for fads and fancy diets - some dangerous, others just daft. Of course, the story of nutrition does not end there. We have discovered the key vitamins and minerals our body needs, but research continues on the connections between diet, health and disease. The body's biochemistry is complex, and there are no easy answers, no magic formula, that applies to all individuals. The safest and most rational course would seem to be a sensible, moderate, and varied diet, not forgetting that 'a little of what you fancy does you good'.

The Curious History of Irish Dogs

The Curious History of Irish Dogs PDF Author: Blake Knox
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781848407015
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 224

Get Book

Book Description
In The Curious History of Irish Dogs, David Blake Knox tells the remarkable stories of each of the nine breeds, and reveals how they have become inextricably linked to the human beings with whom they share the island.