All About Love: New Visions

bell hooks

Jan 2018 · Love Song to the Nation Book 1 · Sold by HarperCollins

About this ebook

A New York Times bestseller and enduring classic, All About Love is the acclaimed first volume in feminist icon bell hooks' "Love Song to the Nation" trilogy.  All About Love reveals what causes a polarized society, and how to heal the divisions that cause suffering. Here is the truth about love, and inspiration to help us instill caring, compassion, and strength in our homes, schools, and workplaces.

“The word ‘love’ is most often defined as a noun, yet we would all love better if we used it as a verb,” writes bell hooks as she comes out fighting and on fire in All About Love. Here, at her most provocative and intensely personal, renowned scholar, cultural critic and feminist bell hooks offers a proactive new ethic for a society bereft with lovelessness--not the lack of romance, but the lack of care, compassion, and unity. People are divided, she declares, by society’s failure to provide a model for learning to love. 

As bell hooks uses her incisive mind to explore the question “What is love?” her answers strike at both the mind and heart. Razing the cultural paradigm that the ideal love is infused with sex and desire, she provides a new path to love that is sacred, redemptive, and healing for individuals and for a nation. The Utne Reader declared bell hooks one of the “100 Visionaries Who Can Change Your Life.” All About Love is a powerful, timely affirmation of just how profoundly her revelations can change hearts and minds for the better. 

Ratings and reviews

I was raised by the 2 strongest women I know, my mom and my grandma. They will forever have more integrity, passion and power of will than many people I know. I bought the book in search for answers about why its been hard for me to love after my first relationship left me broken in pieces. This book had some amazing parts like when it said that we should use love as a verb rather than a noun. Also how love is a choice. However I do not appreciate the men-bashing nature of this book, not specifically because I am a man but rather because I want equality among all. To say "The very concept of “being a man” and a “real man” has always implied that when necessary men can take action that breaks the rules, that is above the law." it is a wrong generalization. Throughout my life when someone tells me "Be a man" or "Man up" it has nothing to do with breaking rules and all about feelings. This is just one example of many where generalizations of men behaviors are made. I can think of occasions where the arguments are true about some men but to make generalizations about any gender is just asking for that which we are fighting against, sexist behavior. Overall I believe this book can definitely help people and it has some great ideas which I will continue to use in my life. If this would be rewritten without all the generalizations about a specific sex I would have appreciated it more and give it at least 4 starts.

I didnt want to read a book to tell me how to love. But my bf asked me to. It is a life changer. This book really opened my eyes about my relationship with my bf. I would recommend anyone that has different thoughts about if there partner or yourself is in love then read this book.

I think everyone should read and reflect on this book. Let it influence your perspective and provide context beyond the societal training we've all navigated through

About the author

Bell Hooks is a cultural critic, feminist theorist, and writer. Celebrated as one of our nation's leading public intellectual by The Atlantic Monthly, as well as one of Utne Reader's "100 Visionaries Who Could Change Your Life," she is a charismatic speaker who divides her time among teaching, writing, and lecturing around the world. Previously a professor in the English departments at Yale University and Oberlin College, hooks is the author of more than 17 books, including All About Love: New Visions; RememberedRapture: The Writer at Work; Wounds of Passion: A Writing Life; Bone Black: Memories of Girlhood; Killing Rage: Ending Racism; Art on My Mind: Visual Politics; and Breaking Bread: Insurgent Black Intellectual Life. She lives in New York City.