The title of this one caught my attention. The resignation that the title evokes is what is explored in this book, that is, h0w people though American history have found themselves getting married for any other reason than love. Sometimes it is to get more land from the government, sometimes marriage gets people better treatment in the judicial system (unfortunately), no matter how you slice it, marriage has had many benefits besides possibly living with the love of your life forever.

I liked how exhaustive that this book. It covers the cultural and political reasons why marriage is favorable to remaining celibate or single. It invited me to reevaluate my thoughts on this institution. After all, isn't love and companionship enough? This book proves that no, marriage leads to better outcomes in various instances, often due to bias in people's perceptions of relationships.

In all, I recommend this for people looking for interesting works of social history and sociology.

Thank you to NetGalley, the publisher, and the author for giving me a free eARC of this book to read in exchange for my review!

Of course the title of this book made me laugh, but the content of it really kept my interest.  It's a history of the legal issues around marriage.  Topics range from government idealization of marriage over singledom, gold diggers (both female and male), bigamy, civil war veterans pensions, immigration law, divorce, immorality, age of consent to children born out of wedlock.  The author took very technical legal topics and made them relatable with good examples from case law.  Overall a very enjoyable book.

I was never more excited to read a book. I "joke" (but not really) about my own marriage being simply about resources. He had health insurance and I didn't. I was a single mother and needed some help watching the kids. He can't manage to keep himself alive and will eat rotten food if I am not there to check it.
So we are married.
We like each other and get along fine but I am not about to marry a man who can't provide simply for "love."
Marriage has always been about those resources. Mormon polygamy was about securing your own home and place in the world (for women at least.). Jane Richards and Belle London were friends who discussed this regularly. It certainly wasn't about love.
I loved learning that age of consent laws were to prevent male gold diggers!
Also Social Security was intended for men. Of course it was! We marry them to get those benefits. No benefits for single women.

There is just so much here I can't even talk about it, but it is eye opening!

Marriage is so fraught with issues.. This book presents every reason for and against marriage mankind has given thought to, The only one missing is the one I heard from a professor decades ago, was two cavemen fighting over who the helped in the creation of a baby a cave woman created! Lol. It was interesting, and entertaining, to hear the many schemes men women, governments, cultures, etc,,, have thought of to try and equalize relationships between men, women. Ms. Zug did a very thorough job of research to include so much in one book, The book is well written and is really hard to put down once started. A class should be devoted to the study of marriage in high school,

3.75
I love deep-diving into random topics and this did not disappoint! super interesting. really dives into the history and function of marriage as an institution. all of the different relevant court cases also just felt like historical gossip which I loved.
one small complaint—why was the notes section laid out like that?? there are hundredssss of citations throughout this book. half of them are just normal citations of texts, and half of them are paragraphs of additional information that are buried within the citation list at the back of the book. You never knew if those tiny numbers were gonna be a source or a side quest. not a good way of laying it out imo

After having read Marcia Zug's other book, Buying a Bride, I was looking forward to reading her latest foray into the history of marriage. And it did not disappoint!

Zug has a great and relatable reading style that makes it a breezy read even though you are learning lots. I had a few WTH moments with the examples she related, and that made it all the more enjoyable. Especially since she managed to pick poignant examples that underscored her point whilst also being entertaining and engaging.

I also quite enjoyed throughout her relating her topic to modern instances of the same factor contributing to marriage decisions to show that not as much has changed as we had thought. This way of showing continuity is also one of the best ways to show how we need a discussion around marriage and how modern values sometimes are ham-strung by a law that can't accommodate them.

**Book provided by Netgalley for an honest review***

A wonderful surprise. An absolutely enjoyable book, which I can only fault for not specifying from the title that the investigation focuses exclusively on the United States (a detail abundantly clarified on the back cover, anyhow). It would be truly interesting if the author gave us a broader study that also includes Europe in the future (or if some other historian were inspired by her book for a similar research), because I'm convinced an equally enjoyable product would emerge.

The text is easy to read: it's well-researched but also discursive, divided into short thematic sub-chapters that make reading and consulting it straightforward. It reaches up to our times (roughly up to the Trump era and Covid-19), without current events being predominant; on the other hand, it's full of curious and delightful anecdotes from the past. My absolute favorite is the one related to marriages of interest between Native American women and white settlers: a real surprise that, right from the first few pages, lets you know that the reading will be able to amaze (and perhaps also shake up some convictions. About History, but perhaps also about the sense of marriage in general?).

This book was informative, clear and enraging. The institution of marriage is something that is romanticised and expected as some kind of natural stage of life, as certain as birth or death. This book gave me much additional historical context on marriage through an American lens (not too dissimilar from a European) and a linear exploration of reasons, historically, that people chose to marry that did not involve 'love' and why maybe it wasn't such a bad idea!

This was brilliant- well worth a read!