Devorah Baum is a visionary writer. Her intellectual depth, her emotional precision and her searing insight can only be gathered under an old fashioned word: wisdom' Zadie SmithA shining exploration of why we marry from writer and academic Devorah BaumStraight, queer, coupled or uncoupled, none of us live outside the cultural influence of marriage, and all of us are written into its story. But what are we really talking about when we talk about marriage? Is it an act of love, a framework for family, a hedge against being alone? Or could its traditional cover conceal something a bit more radical?Drawing on philosophy, fiction, psychoanalysis and pop culture, Baum explores what we are really doing when we say, 'I do'. Entertaining, illuminating, candid and consoling, On Marriage considers the joys and sorrows of matrimony - and its effects on us all.'A hugely thought-provoking, witty, warm tour around every significant writer and thinker on love to have emerged since Adam and Eve' Alain de Botton