In Praise of Love

In Praise of Love
Author: Alain Badiou
Publisher: New Press/ORIM
Total Pages: 114
Release: 2012-11-27
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1595588892

The renowned French philosopher’s “ode to love’s power to unite in the face of eternity, and its optimism in the face of pain” (Publishers Weekly). In a world rife with consumerism, where online dating promises risk-free romance and love is all too often seen as a mere variant of desire and hedonism, Alain Badiou believes that love is under threat. Taking to heart Rimbaud’s famous line “love needs reinventing,” In Praise of Love is the celebrated French intellectual’s passionate treatise in defense of love. For Badiou, love is an existential project, a constantly unfolding quest for truth. This quest begins with the chance encounter, an event that forever changes two individuals, challenging them “to see the world from the point of view of two rather than one.” This, Badiou believes, is love’s most essential transforming power. Through thought-provoking dialogue edited from a conversation between Badiou and Truong, a vibrant cast of thinkers are invoked: Kierkegaard, Plato, de Beauvoir, Proust, and more, create a new narrative of love in the face of twenty-first-century modernity. Moving, zealous, and wise, Badiou’s “paean to the anticapitalist, antiessentialist, unifying power of love” urges us not to fear it but to see it as a magnificent undertaking that compels us to explore others and to move away from an obsession with ourselves (Publishers Weekly). “Finally, the cure for the pornographic, utilitarian exchange of favors to which love has been reduced in America. Alain Badiou is our philosopher of love.” —Simon Critchley, author of The Faith of the Faithless

Of Love and Other Sorrows

Of Love and Other Sorrows
Author: Ashok Chopra
Publisher: Penguin UK
Total Pages: 266
Release: 2016-02-15
Genre: Literary Collections
ISBN: 9385890654

Reports announcing the death of the book are now rife, but the continued relevance of the ten master writers discussed in this volume is proof to the contrary. Here we come across the dissident Czech writer Václav Havel, who later became the nation’s president; the South African Nobel Laureate Nadine Gordimer, with her pronounced anti-apartheid novels; the Chilean-American Isabel Allende, ‘the world’s most widely read Spanish author’; and Günter Grass, hailed as the ‘literary spokesman of his generation’. We also meet Graham Greene and Milan Kundera alongside the Egyptian Naguib Mahfouz, who, in his quiet way, ridiculed Islamic fundamentalism. The book is rounded off with three remarkable Latin American writers: Pablo Neruda, Octavio Paz and Gabriel García Márquez. Of Love and Other Sorrows takes the reader on a fascinating journey in the company of some of the biggest names in modern literature. This illuminating study of their lives and works will seduce readers to rediscover these masters for themselves.

Love Parisienne

Love Parisienne
Author: Florence Besson
Publisher: Chronicle Books
Total Pages: 194
Release: 2018-01-02
Genre: Family & Relationships
ISBN: 1452166153

From the world's most romantic city comes this enchanting guide to passion and love. Three chic Parisian women share their secrets for every stage of romance, from fleeting flirtations to the beginning of a relationship to partnerships that last a lifetime. Featuring tips on what to wear on a first date, where to go for a spontaneous romantic getaway, how to keep things hot between the sheets, and so much more, these pages give readers the tools to handle every amorous situation with allure and grace. Full of fashionable illustrations and bite-size advice delivered in a delightful tone, Love Parisienne is the super-chic guide to living and loving like a fabulous French woman.

Love as Passion

Love as Passion
Author: Niklas Luhmann
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Total Pages: 268
Release: 1998
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 9780804732536

Originally published: Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1986.

Passion and Purity

Passion and Purity
Author: Elisabeth Elliot
Publisher: Revell
Total Pages: 192
Release: 2021-03-16
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1493434551

In her classic book, Elisabeth Elliot candidly shares her love story with Jim Elliot through letters, diary entries, and memories. She is honest about the temptations, difficulties, victories, and sacrifices of two young people whose commitment to Christ took priority over their love for each other. These revealing personal glimpses, combined with relevant biblical teaching, will remind readers that only by putting their human passion and desire through His fire can God purify their love. In a culture obsessed with dating, sex, and intimacy, the need for Elliot's freeing message is greater than ever. This beautifully repackaged edition will appeal to today's young people.

Hollyhocks, Lambs, and Other Passions

Hollyhocks, Lambs, and Other Passions
Author: Dee Hardie
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 1992
Genre: Baltimore Region (Md.)
ISBN: 9780801844089

This is the story of an old country house and how it grew young again, and of the family that has grown with it during the last thirty years. Built in 1843 in the Worthington Valley of Maryland, Thornhill Farm was a sorry derelict when Dee Hardie and her husband first saw it. Today it is sometimes featured in Dee's monthly column for House Beautiful. Its presence and character have molded the Hardies, even as they have molded Thornhill into something far more than a house surrounded by land. "Hollyhocks, Lambs and Other Passions" shows how a house can embrace a family's joy and provide shelter in sorrow. It tells of the ups and downs of raising four children and forty sheep, of the importance of celebrating everything from christenings to Christmas, of stenciling pineapples on the dining room floor and keeping a piano in the kitchen, of digging a rose garden and painting hollyhocks on the barn wall, of Tom Hardie's Sunday cooking, and tea parties for small grandchildren. Dee's determination to keep-- and make-- traditions runs throughout the book. Dee Hardie herself is the heart of Thornhill Farm. The absolute passion she brings to everything she does, the grace and care with which she lives her life, her infectious delight in the world around her, have made her accounts of Thornhill memorable. With her commitment to living life deliberately, she slows us down, for a time, in a world that moves at breakneck speed.

Lust for Love

Lust for Love
Author: Pamela Anderson
Publisher: Center Street
Total Pages: 277
Release: 2018-04-24
Genre: Self-Help
ISBN: 1478992778

An unlikely pair of voices-the world's most recognizable beauty icon and "America's rabbi"-comes together to diagnose how meaningful, passionate sex is on the decline in Western culture, and what is necessary to save it. Sex is dying in America. Inundated with sex and starved for it, obsessed with it yet clueless about it, we are slowly forgetting how to make love. The crisis of modern sexuality is seen in high divorce rates, in the degradation of sexuality through pornography, and tasteless displays of empty, counterfeit erotica. Most of all, it's seen in sexless marriages and platonic relationships where cybersex has become more addictive than the real thing. Sex has become so trivialized, coarsened, and vulgarized that couples no longer feel its pull. The once powerful and irresistible magnetism of sex is being diluted and drained. The authors propose replacing the 1960s' sexual revolution with a new sensual revolution, a rediscovery of intimacy that encourages and ennobles human relationships, elevates healthy lust, and gets us from looking up from the glowing screens of our smartphones to the people around us, most especially the people we love the most. Lust for Love embraces the idea that what our most important relationships need most is lust. It is necessary to rediscover what's sexy again, how to bring back romance, and to understand that in addition to love, we need lust to repair our unfulfilling sex lives and broken relationships. Lust for Love proposes a return to what lovemaking was always meant to be: a desire to know and experience another person in the deepest possible way.

Physiology of Love and Other Writings

Physiology of Love and Other Writings
Author: Paolo Mantegazza
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
Total Pages: 545
Release: 2008-02-16
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1442691727

Physician, anthropologist, travel writer, novelist, politician, Paolo Mantegazza (1831-1910) was probably the most eclectic figure in late-nineteenth century Italian culture. A prolific writer, Mantegazza can be seen as a forerunner of what has come to be known as cultural studies on account of his interdisciplinary approach, his passionate blend of scientific and literary elements in his writings, and his ability to transcend the boundaries between 'high' and 'low' culture. Though extremely popular during his lifetime both in Italy and abroad, Mantegazza's works have not been made available in a significant English language compilation. This volume is a representative overview of Mantegazza's key works, many of them translated into English for the first time. In addition to the unabridged Physiology of Love (1873), a veritable best-seller at the time of its initial publication, this compilation features selections from Mantegazza's writings on medicine, his travelogues, his epistolary novel One Day in Madeira (1868), and his treatise on materialistic aesthetics. Replete with an extensive and informative introduction by the editor, The Physiology of Love and Other Writings also excerpts Mantegazza's works of science fiction, memoir, and social and cultural criticism. As an anthology of the works of Paolo Mantegazza, a writer of diverse topical orientations, this volume is also an account of the circulation of ideas and cross-fertilization of disciplines that defined a crucial period of Italian and European cultural life.

The Dangerous Passion

The Dangerous Passion
Author: David M. Buss
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 268
Release: 2000-02-14
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 0684867869

Why do men and women cheat on each other? How do men really feel when their partners have sex with other men? What worries women more -- men who turn to other women for love or men who simply want sexual variety in their lives? Can the jealousy husbands and wives experience over real or imagined infidelities be cured? Should it be? In this surprising and engaging exploration of men's and women's darker passions, David Buss, acclaimed author of The Evolution of Desire, reveals that both men and women are actually designed for jealousy. Drawing on experiments, surveys, and interviews conducted in thirty-seven countries on six continents, as well as insights from recent discoveries in biology, anthropology, and psychology, Buss discovers that the evolutionary origins of our sexual desires still shape our passions today. According to Buss, more men than women want to have sex with multiple partners. Furthermore, women who cheat on their husbands do so when they are most likely to conceive, but have sex with their spouses when they are least likely to conceive. These findings show that evolutionary tendencies to acquire better genes through different partners still lurk beneath modern sexual behavior. To counteract these desires to stray -- and to strengthen the bonds between partners -- jealousy evolved as an early detection system of infidelity in the ancient and mysterious ritual of mating. Buss takes us on a fascinating journey through many cultures, from pre-historic to the present, to show the profound evolutionary effect jealousy has had on all of us. Only with a healthy balance of jealousy and trust can we be certain of a mate's commitment, devotion, and true love.