My thanks to NetGalley and the publisher Melville House Publishing for an advance copy of this book that is a mediation and call to attention for something we are letting others codify, classify, define, and in many ways ruin and debase.

Ron Rosenbaum is a writer I have followed for quite a long time, one who I might not understand all the time, but one that has never left me without a lot of questions at the end of his work. I subscribed for years to the New York Observer just to read his articles in the second section, an activity that I shared with my father who also loved interesting writing. I learned about lost cult authors, new ways of looking at the world, laughed as his column on the show Seinfeld's final episode, and how he knew it was going out with a whimper. An article that I remember ticked off quite a lot of people. In addition I have read all of his book, on Shakespeare, conspiracies, and even Hitler. In Defense of Love, Rosenbaum looks at how love is being defined in the modern age, with experts speaking about the science of love, data consultants using algorithms to sell love or the idea of loving, and other ways we as a society are cheapening something else to make a dollar.

The book begins with Rosenbaum in Yale University, on scholarship taking part in an experiment that seemed to have no real reason except to get pictures of many Ivy League students in the interest of science. Rosenbaum explains how an expert was able to get a university to take nude pictures of students for years, without any evidence of what these pictures would be good for, all in the interest in science. And this same interest of science is making love, something that has inspired great art, great actions, and shy people to ask others out, another dull boring bit of social media to be filed, stamped, indexed, and numbered.

The book goes in many different directions, and touches on a lot of diverse themes and ideas. Rosenbaum looks at writers from Tolstoy, to writers of bad sex, feminist authors and commentators. Rosenbaum has probably forgotten more about literature than I will ever know, and has many examples from pop culture to long lost poets for examples. I can see why people would have a hard time with this book as it does not cater to love, but discusses that love is a gift and an accomplishment. Not something someone is owed. Most writing about love is similar to the articles in the New York Times Modern Love column. Vacuous, unfulfilling, and stale, sort of like that Whitman's Sampler box that is left in the drugstore on the bottom shelf on Valentine's Day. There is much money to be made in love. One can even save in taxes if one is in love. To Rosenbaum this is not enough. If sometimes he seems to be a scold as he accuses Tolstoy a few times, well that is because he is passionate about his work. And Rosenbaum, loves to write. Which is fair,as I love to read him.