Love's Compass: A Natural History of the Heart

by Daniel Mark Epstein

Book Overview

No Synopsis Available.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0201570947
• ISBN13: 9780201570946
• Release Date: January 1991
• Publisher: Addison Wesley Publishing Company
• Weight: 0.70 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Memoirs of a Living Poet

This is not a book of poems. Mr. Epstein wrote a terrific biography of Edna St. Vincent Millay, entitled _What Lips My Lips Have Kissed_, and several volumes of poetry. I got this book from the library thinking it was a book of poetry but it's not -- it's a sort of autobiography and thoughts on human nature and love and other nifty things. It is not really an autobiography or a memoir, however, for he was born in the early 1950s and at the time of writing this book he was forty years old, which he felt (and I agree) was too young to write a memoir. Like many others who write about the human condition, however, he chooses to illustrate his observations and theories with anecdotes from his own life. In this case, he starts with the analysis of a child's love for its parents, and moves on through life, observing, describing, and analyzing. Of course it's subjective, and one's experiences may differ from his, but that very personal-ness makes it all the more real, and all the more ready to be integrated into one's own paradigm, with alterations as needed. The chapter titles are as follows (with my comments in parentheses): Preface (do not skip) One: Filial Love Two: Sibling Love and Childhood Friendship Three: Erotic Love Four: Conjugal Love and Adult Friendship Five: Parental Love Six: Spiritual Love In my subjective hierarchy of such things, this man is cut from similar cloth as singer/songwriters Ramblin' Jack Elliot and Bob Dylan, as well as the late "Pope of Soap" Dr. Bronner, and other recent eccentric geniuses. Mr. Epstein is at once larger than life and extraordinarily empathetic; the latter is often a quality of a fine poet, but the former not always. We are fortunate to have him writing in our time, and I look forward to his future works.