Love: The Song of the Universe

Writing about something as vast as love is a daunting task, and errors of omission are likely—especially considering its scope as outlined in this book’s description. Writing a gift book makes the task more challenging as the book has be compact and include not only words but also illustrations. For this book, a double page serves as a section that can stand on its own, or as part of the entire work. The title describes which facet of love is covered in the two-page spread. One page provides a brief description and draws primarily from medieval Western history, and the other page contains appropriate black-and-white or gray-scale pictures that are also primarily culled from medieval Western sources. Given the space limitations dictated by gift books, the text may sometimes seem like random factoids forced together under a unifying theme. There are examples—both in the text and illustrations—that are drawn from non-Western sources, but these are scarce. An appendix at the end phonetically lists “I love you” in sixty-seven languages (however, the terms that are given as being different are so close as to be from the same language). Overall, this book would make an appropriate Valentine’s Day gift.