• All About Love

  • New Visions
  • By: bell hooks
  • Narrated by: January LaVoy
  • Length: 6 hrs and 10 mins
  • 4.6 out of 5 stars (201 ratings)

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All About Love  By  cover art

All About Love

By: bell hooks
Narrated by: January LaVoy
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Publisher's summary

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.

©1999 bell hooks (P)2023 HarperCollins Publishers

What listeners say about All About Love

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A vocabulary about love

It was easier to separate the dialogue about love from the religion of the author at the beginning of the book, as she spoke more from a perspective of "spiritualism" and what that may mean for each individual. However the final few chapters delved deep into her personal practice of Christianity and interactions with "angels". This book was nonetheless helpful in contextualizing love, but as a generally nonreligious person, I had to interpret those more overtly Christian chapters far more abstractly in order to apply the lessons to myself. Worth the read but I wonder if there are ANY theoretical writings about love that don't explicitly include a religious subtext.

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A perspective worthy of consideration

I enjoyed this glimpse into what love is and is not.
I appreciate the diverse references used. Example: Chapter 17 uses a biblical story about Joseph to drive a point & I guess sum up things. If you’re a Bible believer then it’ll make sense, but if not then it could still provide useful insight.
Hearing the book references was helpful. I often look up references as I’m listening to audiobooks to add to my Wishlist. This makes it easier for me to find in one location.

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Be ready to truly learn about love

Absolutely a must read for all who love and wish to be loved! Remarkable and thorough

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The world needs this!

Every sentence of this book has value. Thank you for writing it. I've already recommended it to several people. I am also on a mission to open my heart and help others do the same.

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Whew!

So much affirming wisdom and storytelling in this short book. I own a physical copy and will be reading it again to highlight and revisit key passages and thoughts.

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Should be required reading

Phenomenal. Will be buying a hard copy so I can take in these beautiful words

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I can read this again and again.

Third time listening and it really awakens us to the world we live in and how we really have had our definitions of love wrong for so long.

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Beautiful Book that Should Be Mandated Reading for Every Human Being

One of the most inspiring and life changing pieces of media I have ever consumed. Bell Hooks captures the reality of our society and so effortlessly relates our internal selves and struggles with love and acceptance to our world. I truly believe that every single human being on this planet should read this book. Within the first two chapters, I had so many epiphanies and found myself having to pause it to have a dialogue with myself out loud. To me, this book transcends the self help genre. It is therapy. It stimulates so much catharsis, critical thinking, and emotional processing.

Bell Hooks is truly a visionary.

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the truth

this was a very knowledgeable about all we need to work on as adults. thank Bell Hooks

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A must read or listen to to live to the fullest

Wow, they should be teaching this along or before sex ed. leaving this book feeling hopeful and ready to love to my best ability. wish I’d read this sooner.

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