The Book of Love: Improvisations on a Crazy Little Thing

From Roger Rosenblatt, author of the acclaimed memoirs Making Toast, Kayak Morning, and The Boy Detective, comes another lyrical meditation on—and celebration of—a universal and elusive subject

In The Book of Love, Roger Rosenblatt looks at love in all its themes and variations—romantic love, courtship, marriage, battle, heartbreak, fury, confusion, melancholy, beauty, delirium, ecstasy; love of lovers, family, friends, of country, of work, writing, solitude, of art; love of nature; love of life itself.

Using lines from love songs to create a kind of verbal jazz riff, as infectious as it is engaging, Rosenblatt intersperses thoughts about love with fictional vignettes that capture a variety of lovers in different situations with notes addressed to "you," his wife of fifty years. "The story I have to tell is of you. Of others, too. Other people, other things. But mainly of you. It begins and ends with you. It always comes back to you." Pieces follow upon one another in a continuous progression, as if composing one long song that flows through the entire mystery and magic of what it means to love and be in love. What is this thing called love? Lively yet profound, poignant yet joyous, The Book of Love is a triumph of intellect and imagination.