In this almost encyclopedic compendium on romantic love, Ethel Spector Person, Director of the Columbia University Psychoanalytic Center for Training and Research, offers us a summing up of her own and others' ideas on this topic. There are examples from the fields of psychoanalysis, classical and modern literature, folklore and mythology, modern and popular film, and even “trashy” fiction and television. (She evidently does not share many intellectuals' disdain for “pop” culture.) This eminent scholar and psychoanalyst lives very much in the “real world” among “real people.” She is comfortable with Woody Allen, Judith Krantz, Shakespeare, and Sophocles. She writes in a conversational style that creates a feeling of intimacy, as if one were invited to tea with a worldly woman who was delighted to share with you her many insights.