The Book of Marriage: The Wisest Answers to the Toughest Questions (Religion, Marriage, and Family) [Hardcover]

Dana Mack (Editor), David Blankenhorn (Editor)

Book Description

Series: Religion, Marriage, and Family | Publication Date: March 2001

Couples spend an enormous amount of time and energy planning for the perfect wedding. But what about planning for the perfect marriage? In these times of rampant divorce and “relationship” crises, it makes sense to think seriously about the many challenges of married life that loom so large today.

The Book of Marriage offers a treasury of marital wisdom from across the ages. Intellectually engaging, morally responsible, and ideologically balanced, this anthology gathers some of the deepest, wittiest, and most edifying perspectives on the big questions of married life: Why get married at all? Can love last a lifetime? How do we handle money? Who’s the boss? What about children? Conflict? Growing old? Illness and death? There is even a chapter on divorce — one calculated to save a few marriages.

To date there has been no single comprehensive book of source readings on marriage and family life. Assembled with the aid of noted scholars from various fields, this volume treats marriage as more than just a relationship — as an institution, a vocation, and a source of great spiritual and emotional rewards. Each chapter introduces a different quandary of marriage and then culls the best from ancient and modern writings on the theme. The compendium of cultural wisdom on marriage ranges from the Bible and Eastern wisdom to Aristotle, St. Augustine, Maimonides, and Judith Wallerstein; from Homer, Shakespeare, Milton, and Jane Austen to Edward Albee, Gabriel García Márquez, and Bill Cosby.

An important resource for young adults, college students, engaged and married couples, educators, marriage counselors, therapists, pastors, and other family professionals, The Book of Marriage celebrates the diversity and essential humanity of the marital experience in a way that is accessible, entertaining, and eminently useful.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Writings on marriage from sources both ancient and modern, secular and religious, aesthetic and utilitarian have been collected in a single volume by editors Dana Mack (The Assault on Parenthood) and David Blankenhorn (Fatherless America), both with the Institute for American Values. Intended for students and general readers as well as marriage and family professionals, The Book of Marriage: The Wisest Answers to the Toughest Questions includes cross-cultural sources (e.g., the Bible, the Koran, works of Western and Eastern philosophy, literature from around the world) that not only look at marriage in the past but that also offer projections for its future.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

About the Author

Dana Mack is the author of The Assault on Parenthood: How Our Culture Undermines the Family (Simon & Schuster, 1997), newly released in paperback from Encounter Books. Her articles on education, culture, cultural history, the arts and the American family have appeared in the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, USA Today, The New Criterion, Commentary, the Christian Science Monitor, the Oesterreichischer Musikzeitschrift, First Things, the City Journal and many other publications. / Trained as a classical pianist, Mack received her B.A. in Music from the University of California at Berkeley in 1975. A scholar of East Central Europe, she obtained an M.A. and M. Phil. from Columbia University (in 1981 and 1982, respectively) with an emphasis on cultural history. / She is a gubernatorial appointee to the Connecticut Humanities Council, on whose board she is now serving her second term. She serves also as panel member for the Connecticut Collaborations for Teaching The Arts & Humanities Grant Program (sponsored jointly by the Connecticut Commission on the Arts, the Connecticut Humanities Council and the Connecticut Department of Higher Education Eisenhower Program). She is also the publicity and public relations director for Candlelight Concerts, a fifty-two year old, non-profit Fairfield County chamber music series that has featured such world-class ensembles and artists as the Tokyo Quartet, the Beaux Arts Trio, Benny Goodman, Vladimir Ashkenazy, and the Waverly Consort. / Mack is married, and lives with her husband and daughter in Wilton, Connecticut.

David Blankenhorn is founder and president of the Institute for American Values, a private, nonpartisan organization devoted to research, publication, and public education on issues of family well being and civil society. / Blankenhorn has co-edited four books of essays: Rebuilding the Nest: A New Commitment to the American Family (1990); Seedbeds of Virtue: Sources of Competence, Character, and Citizenship in American Society (1995); Promises to Keep: Decline and Renewal of Marriage in America (1996); and The Fatherhood Movement (1999). / In 1994, Blankenhorn helped to found the National Fatherhood Initiative, serving as that organization's founding chairman. He also serves on the board of directors of the National Parenting Association. In 1992, he was appointed by President Bush to serve on the National Commission on America's Urban Families. A frequent lecturer, Blankenhorn's ideas have been cited in Time, Newsweek, the Economist, and elsewhere, and his articles have appeared in scores of publications, including the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, USA Today, and Christianity Today. He has been profiled by the CBS Evening News and other news organizations, and has been featured on numerous national television programs, including Oprah, 20/20, The Today Show, Charlie Rose, and ABC Evening News. / Prior to founding the Institute in 1987, Blankenhorn worked as a community organizer in Virginia and Massachusetts. He served two years as a VISTA Volunteer. A native of Jackson, Mississippi, he founded the Mississippi Community Service Corps and the Virginia Community Service Corps in high school. In 1977, he graduated magna cum laude in social studies from Harvard, where he was president of Phillips Brooks House, the campus community service center, and the recipient of a John Knox Fellowship. In 1978, he was awarded an M.A. with distinction in comparative social history from the University of Warwick in Coventry, England. / Blankenhorn lives in New York City with his wife and three children. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 636 pages
• Publisher: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company (March 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0802838960
• ISBN-13: 978-0802838964
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6.6 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.5 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,007,660 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Truth at Last, June 9, 2001

By 

"qam-nh" (Nashua, NH USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Book of Marriage: The Wisest Answers to the Toughest Questions (Religion, Marriage, and Family) (Hardcover)

Todays high school and college textbooks address the concept of marriage as if this most precious and natural of all relationships between a man and a woman is now a relic, a trap, an alternative lifestyle, or something to be avoided in a post-modern world centered on self-fulfillment and utter individual independence since our "modern" philosophy must be "if it feels good, just do it".

David Blankenhorn for more than a decade has studied and often spoken at national conferences about today's national tragedy to avert, undermine, destroy and discourage marriage. As President of the Institute for American Values (www.americanvalues.org), he plus most nationally prominent and concerned sociologists, psychologists, family researchers and public policy analysts have studied and analyzed root causes and outcomes within our nation that have compromised us as a healthy and enduring culture.

Bursting on the scene in Atlantic Monthly (April 93) with the landmark essay "Dan Quayle Was Right", fellow researcher Barbara Dafoe Whitehead, first exposed stunning root causes. Years later, Maggie Gallagher extended the analysis in her remarkable book "The Abolition of Marriage - How We Destroy Lasting Love".

Thus began David's quest for corrective action by exploring drivers and new means to address an intergenerational crisis on the verge of spiraling out of control, since the alternative to no action and fresh insights would be the very death of marriage.

IAV identified the purposeful sad state of marriage education and marriage textbooks as being a major contributor. Analysis of existing textbooks on marriage raises serious questions about the political and social agenda publishers pursue for the sake of political correctness.

Poor textbooks for marriage education, coupled with a mass media and press openly hostile and dismissive towards most people who choose or are committed to marriage has bred serious antagonism and low expectations towards this most natural of all relationships.

The Book of Marriage is a new and bright beacon in a dark night. The editors gather some of the deepest, wittiest, and most edifying perspectives on the big questions of married life. Each chapter in this morally rich, ideologically balanced anthology introduces a different quandary of marriage, and then culls the best from ancient and modern writing on the theme.

Thus it provides youth and adults with positive information, much hope and solid guidance for having a successful marriage. More than a textbook, it is a stunning book of honest history, insights and antidotes, offering wisdom and hope, while celebrating the diversity and essential humanity of the marriage experience. This is a roadmap for everyone serious about teaching marriage education, seeking instruction for a lasting marriage, or growing through love and devotion in a durable living marriage. Eminently useful, The Book of Marriage is also entertaining. How wonderfully are connected the thoughts of Leo Tolstoy to John Milton, Bertrand Russell with Martin Luther, to the views of Franz Kafka and Euripides, with wisdom from The Qur'an, Holy Bible and William Shakespeare on marriage.

Dana Mack and David Blankenhorn draw upon secular and faith based lessons from history while adding their fresh words of wisdom to revive mankinds enduring notion that marriage is not only healthy for most all adults as a way of life, but it is the very best way we can raise our children, and then joyfully grow old together in an enduring nation.

Such is the truth about marriage.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars In Praise of Marriage, May 31, 2001

By 

William Muehlenberg (Melbourne Australia) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Book of Marriage: The Wisest Answers to the Toughest Questions (Religion, Marriage, and Family) (Hardcover)

What's so special about marriage? All relationships are of equal value. Marriage is an outdated and unnecessary institution. These and other objections to marriage are commonly heard today. Indeed, in a culture where history is devalued and morality is mocked, marriage, like so many other great traditions, is seen as passe. But marriage is not so easily disposed of. In fact, marriage is much more of a universal and long-standing tradition than many might expect. Marriage has been the norm of most cultures though-out most of human history.

It is in response to our historical and intellectual myopia that this book is written. Dane Mack and David Blankenhorn have assembled in one volume some of the most profound, most witty, and most incisive comments on marriage available. Poet and philosophers, theologians and historians, sociologists and playwrights - all are found in this anthology of writings on the beauty and wonder, the joys and frustrations, of this much maligned institution.

Short pithy articles come from a wide range of sources: the Koran and the Bible, Aristotle and Erasmus, Homer and Chaucer, Milton and Kafka, George Bernard Shaw and Viktor Frankl, Thomas Aquinas and Martin Luther. The breadth of diversity and the wide coverage of disciplines does not spoil the unity of this book. Marriage, warts and all, is given a new and invigorating appraisal.

The Book of Marriage is a welcome antidote to the scepticism and criticism marriage has taken over recent years. It inspires and challenges, as well as informs and motivates. If you want one book to encourage you in your marriage, to give as a gift, or to simply enjoy in whatever state you find yourself in, this is it.

0 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Propaganda, May 22, 2008

By 

T. Paroma "I <3 Amazon" (Fairfield County, CT USA) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: The Book of Marriage: The Wisest Answers to the Toughest Questions (Religion, Marriage, and Family) (Hardcover)

I was forced to buy this for my college class and I thought it was a horrible "textbook". It pretty much doomed us all to Hades if we didn't stay married. It didn't explore the different types of marriage at all. It was very tunnel-visioned. I hated that it was required reading.

Boo.