Just when the clamor over "traditional" marriage couldn’t get any louder, along comes this groundbreaking book to ask, "What tradition?" In Marriage, a History, historian and marriage expert Stephanie Coontz takes readers from the marital intrigues of ancient Babylon to the torments of Victorian lovers to demonstrate how recent the idea of marrying for love is—and how absurd it would have seemed to most of our ancestors. It was when marriage moved into the emotional sphere in the nineteenth century, she argues, that it suffered as an institution just as it began to thrive as a personal relationship. This enlightening and hugely entertaining book brings intelligence, perspective, and wit to today’s marital debate.

The groundbreaking Kinsey Report study on female sexuality from “one of the most influential figures in American intellectual history” (The New York Times). Originally published in 1953, the material presented in Sexual Behavior in the Human Female was derived from personal interviews with nearly 6,000 women; from studies in sexual anatomy, physiology, psychology, and endocrinology. The study revealed the incidence and frequency with which women participate in various types of sexual activity and how such factors as age, decade of birth, and religious adherence are reflected in patterns of sexual behavior. The authors make comparisons of female and male sexual activities and investigate the factors which account for the similarities and differences between female and male patterns of behavior and provide some measure of the social significance of the various types of sexual behavior. “[It] shocked the world in 1953 with its explicit revelations. Countries banned it. Churches berated it. Some scholars scoffed . . . but it was an instant success, selling 270,000 copies in less than a month . . . [Kinsey] made headlines around the globe with his findings on such things as masturbation, sex before marriage and adultery.”—CBSNews.com

The essays in this volume--written by academic lawyers as well as legal and moral philosophers--address some of the most intriguing questions raised by natural law theory and its implications for law, morality, and public policy. Some of the essays explore the implications that natural law theory has for jurisprudence, asking what natural law suggests about the use of legal devices such as constitutions and precedents. Other essays examine the connections between natural law and natural rights.