Love and Sex: Cross-Cultural Perspectives

Thanks to many years of hard work and fighting for the right to study love and sex as a scientific topic, Elaine Hatfield has brought us an objective, cross-cultural look at love and sex. Richard Rapson's contribution is to add balance by providing us with the historical perspective. Together these two authors manage to give us a interdisciplinary perspective on love and sex among various cultures. Any serious student of psychology, history, anthropology, sexuality, and many other areas should add this book to their list of books to read!

My comment is more in response to the first persons review of this book. It is called Love and Sex: Cross-cultural perspective for a reason. To learn about the traditions of love and sex from an other cultures perspective. Not just the puritanical ridden minds of some westerners and Christians. When the above reviewer said the author was "somewhat biased against traditional chritstianity" I had to roll my eyes with contempt. Christianity is not the end all tell all for human behavior. I believe that the western culture gives themselves to much credit and likes to pat themselves on the back and sometimes shun other cultures for not living up to their standards of morality. Some may say that the greatest achievement of western culture is Christianity. I disagree, in many ways Christianity has lead to horrific consequences. Murder, war, the opression of women and minorities, and many more to numerous to mention. So, first reviewer of book I hope you keep in mind that there is no right way to live or believe and to open up your mind to different perspectives and to not think with ethnocentrism.

I enjoyed reading this book a lot. It tells about love and sex from a cross-cultural perspective. However, it mainly emphasizes the initiation and dissolution of relationships, and does not attempt to dissect what actually goes on during them. It is most certainly NOT a self-help book. I found the book to be biased somewhat against traditional Christianity. Nevertheless, traditional religion needs to be rethought. Yet it is somewhat unfortunate that those who are so sensitive to other cultures are less sensitive to traditional Western culture.