The Nature And Chemistry Of Romantic Love

Kevin Purday reviews Why We Love by Helen E. Fisher, in Metapsychology:

Heart8This book is an ambitious attempt to map the physiological basis of what we call love. The author is an anthropologist but in this work she cooperates with specialists in several fields, most notably specialists in brain scanning, to try to gain a genuinely comprehensive understanding of the phenomenon of love. She is currently a research professor at Rutgers University and is already well known for her books The First Sex, and Anatomy of Love.

The book is a melange of anthropology — stories of falling in love from cultures all over the world, history — numerous historical accounts of love, literature — many quotations about love from poetry and novels, animal biology — analogies between human love and ‘love’ in many different species of animal, and human biology/psychology — in-depth accounts of the physiology and psychology of love. It is a heady mixture.

More here.