{"product_id":"in-defense-of-love-isbn-9781685891596","title":"In Defense of Love","description":"\u003cb\u003e\"Rosenbaum offers a spirited and enjoyable defense of his version of love.\" —\u003ci\u003eThe Wall Street Journal\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eA stirring manifesto on love in the modern age, now available for the first time in paperback:  . . .\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn a work of ambition and brio, legendary journalist Ron Rosenbaum tackles his hardest topic yet: everyone's favorite four-letter word. He begins by investigating the neuroscience of love, arguing that our understanding of love is imperiled by quantification and algorithms, which distill our behavior into mathematical formulas, our personality into brain-chemical categories, and our curiosity into quiz questions. The very capacity that makes us human, Rosenbaum posits, is being taken over by numbers.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eTo save it, he turns to literature and pop culture, discussing writing about love from a vast range of sources, including Tolstoy novellas, trailblazing Updike manuscripts, David Foster Wallace and Chrissie Hynde. Part of love’s essence is its mystery, says Rosenbaum, and when he eventually finds his own answer to the riddle of love — a happy ending! — it turns up in a completely unexpected place.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eIn Defense of Love\u003c\/i\u003e is more than an examination of the intersection of love with literature and science. It is a celebration of the uncanny and the persistent, the sublime and the ridiculous: the inexorable power of love.\"Rosenbaum offers a spirited and enjoyable defense of his version of love.\" —\u003ci\u003e\u003cb\u003eThe Wall Street Journal\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “[I]n this impassioned offering. . .Even staunch skeptics will have their heartstrings tugged.” —\u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003ePublishers Weekly\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \"[Rosenbaum is] a national treasure.\" —\u003cb\u003eMichele Madigan Somerville\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Ron  Rosenbaum has done it again. The investigative humanist who dissected  unsatisfactory explanations for evil in \u003ci\u003eExplaining Hitler \u003c\/i\u003eand for genius  in \u003ci\u003eThe Shakespeare Wars \u003c\/i\u003eapplies his scalpel to reductionist  brain-science notions about love with the same lively blend of  erudition, insight, and humor that long ago established him as a leading  voice in American letters. Share it with someone you love.\" \u003cb\u003e—Timothy  Noah, author of \u003ci\u003eThe Great Divergence\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"In Ron  Rosenbaum’s insightful, touching and surprising \u003ci\u003eIn Defense of Love\u003c\/i\u003e,  Rosenbaum manages to clobber all the theories and rhetoric that attempt  to reduce that emotion to science. With Rosenbaum, love has finally met  its perfect match.\" \u003cb\u003e—Betsy Carter, author of \u003ci\u003eLost Souls at the Neptune Inn\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Ron's  work is invariably awe-inspiring. I intend to purchase a copy at full  price. The finest compliment you can give an author is not 'I read your  book' or 'I loved your book' but 'I bought your book.'\" \u003cb\u003e—Teresa  Carpenter, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Feature Writing\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Of  all the vocabularies that give love its dimensions, neuroscience is not  just the most dismal; it’s the shortest on explanatory power. Following  the poets—including Sappho, Chekhov, Philip Larkin, John Updike, Sheila  Heti, Edith Wharton (especially her porn) and of course Shakespeare—Ron  Rosenbaum’s \u003ci\u003eIn Defense of Love\u003c\/i\u003e rescues the ecstatic, agonizing,  galactic experience of love from its reduction to fMRI film. Read  Rosenbaum and have your heart rent.” —\u003cb\u003eVirginia Heffernan, author of \u003ci\u003eMagic and Loss\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Whether  on Hitler's evil, Shakespeare's genius, or the nature of love, Ron  Rosenbaum resists the lure of easy answers. . .I love Ron's book.\"  —\u003cb\u003eErrol Morris, \u003ci\u003eAir Mail\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003eRON ROSENBAUM was a Phi Beta Kappa student of literature at Yale, and briefly studied at Yale Graduate School, before leaving to write. His work has appeared in \u003ci\u003eHarper’s, The New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker, Esquire, Vanity Fair, Smithsonian Magazine, \u003c\/i\u003eand\u003ci\u003e Slate\u003c\/i\u003e, among other publications. He was a columnist at the \u003ci\u003eNew York Observer \u003c\/i\u003eand the White House correspondent for the \u003ci\u003eVillage Voice\u003c\/i\u003e during Watergate. His book, \u003ci\u003eExplaining Hitler,\u003c\/i\u003e a \u003ci\u003eNew York Times\u003c\/i\u003e Notable Book of the Year in 1998, has been translated into ten languages. Random House published a collection of his essays and journalism, \u003ci\u003eThe Secret Parts of Fortune\u003c\/i\u003e, in 2000. In 2006, he published \u003ci\u003eThe Shakespeare Wars\u003c\/i\u003e, which Cynthia Ozick called “a spectacular book.” He has been a member of the advisory board of the Royal Shakespeare Company’s publications project, and the editorial board of Lapham's Quarterly.","brand":"Melville House","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46305032110309,"sku":"NP9781685891596","price":19.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9781685891596.jpg?v=1767729915","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/in-defense-of-love-isbn-9781685891596","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}