Us: Americans Talk about Love

g the format of his 2001 Gig: Americans Talk About Their Jobs, author and journalist Bowe surveyed Americans of all ages and backgrounds for their thoughts on romance. Beginning with the prompt, ""Please tell me about the person you have loved the most,"" each interview illustrates love as unique to its beholder. Love strikes one respondent in a rehab center, another during a crystal meth binge, another in the killing fields of Cambodia, another in the aftermath of divorce; love also proves its dominion over class differences, natural disasters (like hurricane Katrina), disease (like Alzheimers), and even death. While the more dramatic stories will likely stick with readers longest, plenty of accounts chronicling the deep, gentle bonds of long-lived romance, or the intense burn of young love, strike satisfying chords. Bowe allows each of his subjects the space to tell their stories, and each one proves compelling in itself, while showing that love is indeed a many-splendored (and many-splintered) thing, hard to pin down and often unexpected. Though timed conspicuously for Valentine's gift-giving, this hard-to-put-down take on love is surprisingly substantial.