Marriage, a History: How Love Conquered Marriage

Marriage today is held up as a blissful haven of love and friendship, sex and stability. We long for the gold standard, the traditional marriage but marriage turns out to have a chequered past - the 'traditional marriage' was evanescent. This real look at what people think of as 'traditional' finally explains why so many married people are so unsatisfied. Marriage has changed more in the last thirty years than in the previous five thousand, and few of the old 'rules' for marriage still apply. In the courts, the op-ed pieces, and at the dinner table, battles rage over what marriage means, why people do it, and who can do it. Marriage, a History is the one book you need to understand not only the vicissitudes of modern marriage but also gay marriage, 'living together' and divorce. Stephanie Coontz shatters dozens of myths about the past and future of married life and shows us why marriage, though more fragile today, can be more rewarding than ever before.

Stephanie Coontz is the Director of Research and Public Education at the Council on Contemporary Families and teaches history and family studies at The Evergeen State College in Olympia, Washington. She divides her time between Makaha, Hawaii, and Washington. The author of the award-winning The Way We Never Were: American Families and the Nostalgia Trap, she writes about marriage and family issues in many national journals including The Washington Post, Harper’s, Chicago Tribune, and Vogue. Her work has been translated into Japanese, German, French, and Spanish.

On the web: http://www.stephaniecoontz.com