"There is nothing more alienating than having your pleasures disputed by someone with a theory," writes Lauren Berlant. Yet the ways in which we live sexuality and intimacy have been profoundly shaped by theories - especially psychoanalytic ones, which have helped to place sexuality and desire at the center of the modern story about what a person is and how her history should be read. At the same time, other modes of explanation have been offered by popular and mass culture. In these domains, sexual desire is not deemed the core story of life; it is mixed up with romance, a particular version of the story of love. In this small theoretical novella-cum-dictionary entry, Lauren Berlant engages love and desire in separate entries. In the first entry, Desire mainly describes the feeling one person has for something else: it is organized by psychoanalytic accounts of attachment, and tells briefly the history of their importance in critical theory and practice. The second entry, on Love, begins with an excursion into fantasy, moving away from the parent-child structure so central to psychoanalysis and looking instead at the centrality of context, environment, and history. The entry on Love describes some workings of romance across personal life and commodity culture, the place where subjects start to think about fantasy on behalf of their actual lives. Whether viewed psychoanalytically, institutionally, or ideologically, love is deemed always an outcome of fantasy. Without fantasy, there would be no love. Desire/Love takes us on a tour of all of the things that sentence might mean.

This wonderfully small, thick book--like a box of photos--is divided up into the following categories: bonds (between partners and family members), icons (say, Jane Fonda as Barbarella), observations of glimpsed love or lust, come-ons to further naughtiness, tokens (mostly flowers juxtaposed with women), libidos (lusty acts), reveries (erotica), and obsessions (the sexual unusual). The international array of photographers includes Man Ray, Robert Mapplethorpe, Nan Goldin, Helmut Newton, Sally Mann, Immogen Cunningham, Brassai, and Julia Margaret Cameron. After a lengthy introduction on the history of photography and desire, there's nothing but photos there-on-in. You might just get aroused, or fascinated as to how others are aroused, or intrigued as to how far people go to arouse others. Ewing is director of the Musee de l'Elysee in Lausanne, Switzerland. Annotation copyrighted by Book News Inc., Portland, OR

Are you frustrated by stymied relationships, missed connections, and the loneliness of the search for someone to spend the rest of your life with? Are you ready, instead, to find “The One”? In Calling in “The One,” Katherine Woodward Thomas shares her own personal experience to show women that in order to find the relationship that will last a lifetime, you have to be truly open and ready to create a loving, committed, romantic union. Calling in “The One” shows you how. Based on the Law of Attraction, which is the concept that we can only attract what we’re ready to receive, the provocative yet simple seven-week program in Calling in “The One” prepares you to bring forth the love you seek. For each of the 49 days of Thomas’s thoughtful and life-affirming plan, there is a daily lesson, a corresponding practice, and instruction for putting that lesson into action in your life. Meditation, visualization, and journaling exercises will gently lead you to recognize the obstacles on your path to love and provide ways to steer around them. At the end of those 49 days, you will be in the ideal emotional state to go out into the world and find “The One.” An inspirational approach that offers a radical new philosophy on relationships, Calling in “The One” is your guide to finding the love you seek.

Nautilus Award Gold Medal Winner, Ecology & Environment In Matter and Desire, internationally renowned biologist and philosopher Andreas Weber rewrites ecology as a tender practice of forging relationships, of yearning for connections, and of expressing these desires through our bodies. Being alive is an erotic process--constantly transforming the self through contact with others, desiring ever more life. In clever and surprising ways, Weber recognizes that love--the impulse to establish connections, to intermingle, to weave our existence poetically together with that of other beings--is a foundational principle of reality. The fact that we disregard this principle lies at the core of a global crisis of meaning that plays out in the avalanche of species loss and in our belief that the world is a dead mechanism controlled through economic efficiency. Although rooted in scientific observation, Matter and Desire becomes a tender philosophy for the Anthropocene, a "poetic materialism," that closes the gap between mind and matter. Ultimately, Weber discovers, in order to save life on Earth--and our own meaningful existence as human beings--we must learn to love.

An unexpected journey toward unconditional love Like so many men, Tim Muldoon assumed that life followed a script. More to the point, he assumed that love would follow a script—one determined by his own choices. When the script changed, as it inevitably does, Tim was forced to ask some critical questions: How could he bring his disparate desires into harmony with one another? Could he make the journey to where his true dreams seemed to be leading him? Should he—or could he—venture into the unknown territory of selfless love? In meditative, heartfelt prose, best-selling author Tim Muldoon shows how authentic love grows through unexpected twists and turns in a relationship, and how by following the deepest desires of his heart, he found the freedom to become his best and most passionate self. From sex to self-giving love, from the desire to be loved to the desire to serve God in the person of his wife, from resisting adoption to loving his two adopted daughters with unbridled joy, Muldoon shares with us his personal love story, whose altered script he came to embrace. Through Muldoon's journey, each of us is invited to consider how falling in love can become our greatest adventure with God.

How can you keep sexual desire alive over the long term? More and more people are finding it difficult to maintain a relationship that is both emotionally and sexually gratifying. In a book that will challenge and forever change how you think about love and sex, clinical psychologist and sex therapist Stella Resnick, PhD, draws on the latest scientific research to explore the love-lust dilemma. Dr. Resnick reveals how early programming can inhibit sexual desire as lovers become committed partners and begin to treat each other less like lovers and more like family. Dr. Resnick’s revolutionary body-mind program will help you recognize limiting old patterns, learn valuable skills for enhancing romantic love and sexual aliveness, and tap into your natural capacity to enjoy emotionally fulfilling sexual pleasure. You'll discover: *A 10-Step Loving Sex Program with detailed methods for deepening the pleasures of emotional intimacy and broadening your erotic repertoire *The latest research in sexology, neuroscience, brain neuroplasticity, and the psychology of flourishing with practical applications for relationships *Real-life stories from the author's decades of work with clients and her own personal journey

He knows how to score …on the field and in the bedroom. But Alex Dare isn’t prepared for the injury that sidelines him into early retirement. Still, if it means working closely with the one woman who ever meant more to him than a one night stand, he’s all on board. But there is no amount of wealth or charm that could persuade social worker, Madison Evans, back into Alex's bed. Good thing Alex loves a challenge. But soon seducing Madison becomes more than just a goal, it just might define his future.