05-04-2013, 11:48 AM | #1 |
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Marriage: a history
Has anyone else read this book by Stephanie Coontz? I just finished it (fully 4/10th of the book are endnotes supporting her research) and was actually pretty impressed with her history of how the concept of marriage changed from a purely economic one that affected whole villages (or at least kin lines) to our current individualized love-based institution.
The one-star comments at Amazon are pretty interesting - a lot of rants against feminism, although this book is by no means a feminist manifesto. As I said, just about everything is extensively footnoted to support her facts and conclusions. |
05-06-2013, 01:22 AM | #2 |
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Never heard it.
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05-06-2013, 04:39 AM | #3 |
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Me neither, but it sounds fascinating.
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05-06-2013, 04:45 AM | #4 |
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It's been out for awhile - I first saw it when I was working at Borders during it's last days, so it's a few years old. It's out now in paperback.
One of the things that impressed me about the book is her statement, in the introduction, that this wasn't the book she thought she'd be writing, because her research took her in different directions than what she'd been taught. I like that about a researcher, going where the evidence leads rather than where "common knowledge" says. |
05-06-2013, 05:14 AM | #5 |
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Well it got 3.92 on Goodreads http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2...iage_a_History Looks interesting :-)
Last edited by owly; 05-06-2013 at 05:18 AM. |
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05-06-2013, 06:28 AM | #6 |
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I bought it i8n hardcover when it first came out and it has lingered in my TBR pile ever since. This is the problem with me and books. I am constantly buying new books (both hardcover and ebooks) and with a few exceptions (e.g., a novel by David Weber or L.E. Modesitt, Jr.) rarely immediately get to a newly purchased book. And then the inevitable happens -- the TBR gets larger and the book I once wanted to read "sooner rather than later" gets further buried.
I have moved this book closer to the top of my TBR pile. |
05-08-2013, 04:40 AM | #7 |
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some places must kill 5 baboons to be married
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