Heartbreak

A Personal and Scientific Journey

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Pub Date 01 Feb 2022 | Archive Date 31 Jan 2022

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Description

Florence Williams explores the fascinating, cutting-edge science of heartbreak while seeking creative ways to mend her own.

When her twenty-five-year marriage unexpectedly falls apart, journalist Florence Williams expects the loss to hurt. What she doesn’t expect is that she’ll end up in the hospital, examining close-up the way our cells listen to loneliness. She travels to the frontiers of the science of “social pain” to learn why heartbreak hurts so much and why so much of the conventional wisdom about it is wrong.

Searching for insight as well as personal strategies to game her way back to health, Williams tests her blood for genetic markers of grief, undergoes electrical shocks in a laboratory while looking at pictures of her ex, and ventures to the wilderness in search of awe as an antidote to loneliness. For readers of Wild and Lab Girl, Heartbreak is a remarkable merging of science and self-discovery that will change the way we think about loneliness, health, and what it means to fall in and out of love.

About the Author: Florence Williams is the author of Breasts, winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and The Nature Fix. A contributing editor at Outside magazine, her writing has appeared in the New York Times, National Geographic, and many other outlets.

Florence Williams explores the fascinating, cutting-edge science of heartbreak while seeking creative ways to mend her own.

When her twenty-five-year marriage unexpectedly falls apart, journalist...


Available Editions

EDITION Hardcover
ISBN 9781324003489
PRICE $30.00 (USD)

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Average rating from 11 members


Featured Reviews

When an experienced science journalist has her heart broken, she turns her curiosity and smarts toward figuring out what's really going on. A beautiful combination of personal memoir and hard-nosed reporting from Florence Williams, one of the best.

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Florence Williams invites us into her shattered world as she explores the physiology and psychology of heartbreak first-hand and through interviews with other sufferers or heartbreak and various trauma. This well-researched memoir explores several topics while we see our author-narrator navigate her own path toward healing. A kind of Grieve, Learn, Forgive journey of self-discovery that will leave you smarter and more empathetic to those who need help processing trauma. A great read whether you are trying to figure out your own heartache or help a close one wrestle with theirs. Heartbreak has a little bit for everyone; drama of trying to mend broken heart and the latest science on bonding and emotional loss. I couldn't put this gem down.

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