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The Reddest Rose: Romantic Love from the Ancient Greeks to Reality TV Liv Strömquist

The Reddest Rose: Romantic Love from the Ancient Greeks to Reality TV Liv Strömquist

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The internationally acclaimed activist follows up her satirical work of graphic medicine with this collection of humorous comics essays about how historical and societal shifts have altered ― and perhaps destroyed ― "romantic love."

The deceptively simple through-line for Swedish media personality and activist Liv Strömquist’s The Reddest Rose is the question: Why does Leonardo DiCaprio date an endless string of 20-something models? Her answer ― in the form of this collection of well-researched, humorous comics essays ― tracks how philosophers and artists, from the Ancient Greeks to Beyoncé, conceptualized romantic love. Strömquist’s signature characters, drawn in a flat, blocky style, ask each other questions and offer sharp commentary as they guide readers throughout history and the change in societies' values, from showing love/loving to getting love/being loved. (Poet Hilda "H.D." Doolittle ― who was so love-stricken by a man taking off his glasses that she believed they viewed dolphins together in another dimension ― lends the book its title.) Lord Byron, Socrates, Byung-Chul Han, Ezra Pound, Slavoj Žižek, Lou Andreas-Salomé, Ariadne, and many others have cameos. For the first time in English, in The Reddest Rose, Strömquist wonders: in a rationalist, consumerist world, can romantic love survive? Black-and-white illustrations throughout
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