About How the French Invented Love
• Paperback: 416 pages
• Publisher: Harper Perennial (October 23, 2012)
Oh, how the French love love! For hundreds of years, they have championed themselves as guides to the art de l’amour through their literature, paintings, songs, and cinema. A French man or woman without amorous desire is considered defective, like someone missing the sense of smell or taste. Now revered scholar Marilyn Yalom intimately examines the tenets of this culture’s enduring gospel of romance.
Basing her delightfully erudite findings on her extensive readings of French literature, as well as memories of her personal experiences in la belle France, Yalom explores the many nuances of love as it has evolved over the centuries, from the Middle Ages to the present. Following along, step-by-step, on her romance-tinged literary detective hunt, the reader discovers how the French invented love, how they have kept it vibrant for more than nine centuries, what is unique in the French love experience, and what is universal.
About Marilyn Yalom
Marilyn Yalom is a former professor of French and presently a senior scholar at the Clayman Institute for Gender Research at Stanford University. She is the author of widely acclaimed books such as A History of the Breast, A History of the Wife, and Birth of the Chess Queen, as well as The American Resting Place: Four Hundred Years of History Through our Cemeteries and Burial Grounds, which includes a portfolio of photographs by her son Reid S. Yalom. She lives in Palo Alto, California, with her husband, the psychiatrist and author Irvin D. Yalom.
Marilyn’s Tour Stops
Tuesday, October 23rd: The Year in Books
Thursday, October 25th: Unabridged Chick
Tuesday, October 30th: Doing Dewey
Wednesday, October 31st: Take Me Away
Monday, November 5th: Sophisticated Dorkiness
Tuesday, November 6th: Dreaming in Books
Wednesday, November 7th: Bibliophiliac
Thursday, November 8th: Book Hooked Blog
Friday, November 9th: BooksAreTheNewBlack
Monday, November 12th: missris
Wednesday, November 14th: Oh! Paper Pages
Wednesday, November 28th: Much Madness is Divinest Sense