Rating: 
Summary: Being witty is not enough
Review: Kipnis comes from the Susan Sontag school of writing and the rules are:
1) Be witty and make clever observations.
2) If you disagree with someone, put them down with snide comments rather good arguments.
3) Don't bother doing any research as being bloated from a diet of popular culture is a good substitute for the collection of facts.
This isn't good enough.
I would have been much more impressed if Kipnis had spent time examining the biology of love. A few pages of what actually goes on in our neurobiologies when we fall for someone would have disillusioned much more than a cynical survey of the results of those neurochemicals firing. Think how Darwin destroyed religious superstition with his research. Instead, Kipnis shows how silly people act and how silly people think who criticize how people act when under the influence of romantic/erotic love.
Love is literally dopey (due to the brain's dopamine). People who waste years of their life looking for love are morons. And Kipnis missed an opportunity to tell it like it is to her mostly female readership.
Rating: 
Summary: a thoroughly enjoyable book
Review: Against Love is an extremely interesting work. As the author states, it is a polemic (confrontational argument), not an essay or balanced account of the subject. It is purposefully designed to push the reader into a confrontatory state regarding the subject of love, especially in the context of marriage/coupling in current U.S. society.I found Kipnis' writing wonderful, witty, intense, and refreshing. She is the first author I have read in a long time that sent me packing off to the dictionary more than once in a book. She is erudite without being a stuffy academic, knowledgable without being pedantic, and humorous without being gross. I see her as having the honesty of a Carol Queen, the political savy and wit of a Molly Ivins or Jim Hightower, the insightful intellect of a Noam Chomsky, and more. This is one of the few books I have read in the last few years that had me laughing out loud in places. She really hits the nail right on the thumb. Regardless of how you feel about the topic or the ideas discussed, her writing alone is worth reading the book. Of course, I may be biased. Her writing style is similar enough to mine that I felt very much at home with this book, and read it quickly. She does write in a style that is complex, with long sentences (and paranthetical asides). She also has a substantial vocabulary. Her use of style is neither narcissistic nor exhibitionistic, however. Her use of language in her presentation of ideas is pointed and precise, and it is difficult to put the book down once one starts reading it. (I found myself reading it in one sitting.) Despite being divided into chapters, it reads more like one long, flowing discussion. As far as the actual material, it is not an exhaustive history of marriage and courtship behavior in U.S. society. It is a series of observations and arguments exploring the weakness of the concepts of love and marriage as they are viewed today by mainstream U.S. culture. Kipnis connects recent biological research, various social theories, and behavior reported by people in therapy to weave her arguments. She does address some historical material in order to provide context for her arguments, but again, it is by no means exhaustive. She does provide enough information, however, sources cited in the text and a bibliography and reference list, to encourage more in-depth exploration. It is meant to be a starting point for further exploration and discussion, and offers no surprise happy endings and no panaceas. This is not a book about how to be polyamorous, develop new relationship styles, swing, or live happily alone. It is an intellectual broadside fired at the status quo in order to get people to open up and think about something which is normally not in their conscious awareness, and to question that which is usually mindlessly accepted.
Rating: 
Summary: An Amusing Look at Relationships
Review: Laura Kipnis teaches at Northwestern where my best friend from childhood goes to school. She read the book for one of her classes and has recommended it to every smart sassy woman she knows. Kipnis has a way with words and humor and a slanted look at relationships that will make anyone laugh and ponder. With all the lovey-dovy stuff clogging television screens, its nice to hear someone telling readers that made-for-television movies are indeed made for television. There are a couple of passages that I found particularly amusing--for example, where Kipnis describes the things that people in relationships are prohibited from doing. All together, if you want a refreshing look on love (if someone is really giving you a hard time or you just broke up with someone) this book will put a bright smile on your face.
Rating:
Summary: Great ideas buried under tiresome prose
Review: After hearing Laura Kipnis interviewed on NPR, I rushed out and bought her book, seeing her message as compelling and incredibly relevant to me, a happily single 25 year-old. I found Kipnis' thesis to be incredibly timely, especially in light of Bush's silly new initiative to push for increased rates of marriage. Her ideas are fresh, provocative, and should stimulate much conversation. However, the problem is that her writing style is so cumbersome that she may very well alienate many of the readers she should be appealing to. These are not ideas that should be made accessible only to those in academic circles. She is not writing about quantum mechanics here, but about important issues and trends that affect all of us. For the record, I am close to completing a PhD, and still found myself getting bogged down by Kipnis' prose, and often had to read a paragraph more than once to extract the point.
My wish is that everyone would read this book, because I do think it is timely and important. My fear is that the message will be obscured by Kipnis' often tedious writing style, and this will scare some readers away. My message is please, muddle through!!!
Rating:
Summary: Laura Kipnis Is A True Romantic!
Review: I absolutely Loved "Against Love". What bravery, what charisma, moxy and sheer guts it must take to write such a book! Not to mention prodigious amounts of impressive, bona fide brain power. It's fun to read, informative, challenging and yes, even romantic! It's looney and juney w/moon madness, all delirious, jaded, cynicism wrapped up in a silken velvet blanket of jazzy, witty verbal persuasiveness
In short, it's really fun to read, reaches dazzling heights of brilliant, powerfully argued scholarship...and also should be taken seriously.
Because I think she's dead-on when she deciphers and dissects the ailing, failing, gasping structure that is known as "modern marriage".
Oh, I don't think she's really down on marriage, per se, or that she doubts that for some people, marriage can be a happy little institution to wrap one's self in.
But it does take work, lots of work! And therapy!! And...oh, just read this great book for yourself to find out more.
After reading "Against Love" I still wanted to look at books on having the "perfect wedding", and I still wanted to see loopy, dopey romantic movies (the opium of the masses) and I still wanted to harbor dreams of finally meeting "the one"!
But I also had to take a long, cold, hard look at just what "true love" really entails, and what sacrifices are demanded.
I believe everything Laura Kipnis writes of, and yes, I do think she's a true romantic.
Why?
Just look at the title of her book: "Against Love". It can be taken more than one way. Think about it.
And no, I don't think she's telling everybody to run out and have affairs. She's taking a penetrating, perceptive look at why many, many married folk do, though.
Read this book!!!
Caveat: not for the conformist who wants to stay that way...in how he or she thinks.
Rating:
Summary: I liked it.
Review: I thought Ms. Kipnis was brave to write such a book. I liked it and I liked what she had to say about it. Sure, it isn't pretty and sometimes it can be downright heartbreaking but I beleive if people would WAKE UP, much misery in this world would go away. The author isn't telling us to give up on love or marriage or any of that. She's telling us to reconsider things and about how marriage can hurt/hinder even the most independent of us. I've read books about this sort of thing before--"Playtime" by Kim Corum for starters--and I think there needs to be more of these books out on the market. They help those of us who WANT to understand things better. One warning: Before you buy it, or any book on this subject, take off the rose colored glasses.
Rating: 
Summary: 1 star is 1 too many.
Review: this book is fraught with straw men. kipnis sets up ludicrously stereotypical ideals and then proceeds to attack them with high falutin language, endless redundancies, and self congratulation. i'm all for alternative lifestyles, but this woman is a dim bulb and this book was a waste of money.
Rating: 
Summary: Not fully researched
Review: This book just proves to show the narcissism of our times. Why are publishers allowing individual personal experiences, pseudo science and pop culture as criteria for academic scholarship?
Rating:
Summary: Do your homework next time
Review: I can't respect the scholarship of this author due not to the argument that she represents, but the way she presents it, which is faulty. Kipnis is looking at this from a narrow white middle-class perspective that is ignorant of world history. I agree wholeheartedly with another reviewer who brilliantly blew one her theories out of the water by debunking the claim that the capitalist system is in collusion with the higher powers that be to keep the stifling institution of marriage in place. In Europe, and especially in North America, the birthrate is at an all time low, to the point where both regions will need to bring educated legal immigrants to take up the reigns of society. Employers make it so hard for mothers who take time off after giving birth. Mothers are a liability to the work force; it is a sexist double standard. Infidelity won't solve a bad marriage. Even the passion of having sex with someone new will eventually become routine. I am also puzzled that Kipnis finds cheating one on spouse as the only alternative to the dilemma of matrimonial drudgery. How about not getting married or leaving the relationship altogether? Monogamy is not for everyone (neither is non-monogamy), and there have been life partners with alternatives relationships and lifestyles. This author fears true intimacy, which I think the book is truly about, not infidelity. I think this society is so obsessed with self-gratification and happiness to the point of pathology. Adults want to stay emotionally like children, wanting everything they see. Life is wonderful, and it is painful, this is unavoidable. Great sex from more than one partner or other devices won't avoid this. This Sex and The City mentality does not foster true meaningful relationships. It seems that to disconnect from human beings is in style at the present moment. I have faith we can turn it around. I think her book is good in the sense that it opens up discussion on a very important topic.
Rating:
Summary: Puhlease!!!!!!
Review: This is a perfect example of the excesses of academia, and as a recovering academic, I should know. Although this book is witty and intellectually seductive, it is, as many of these types of discourses are, divorced from the real life dynamics of life-time commitment and partnership. So despite the sophistication of the argument, it is ultimately rather simplistic and naive. Great book to discuss while you toss back a latte with others of the ivory tower crowd, but unlikely to illuminate those who live in the real world.
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