<p>Dispels modern myths about love and marriage--such as the idea that romantic love began with the troubadours--promoted by various ideologues, and argues for an understanding of the family as the most durable and natural of all human institutions.</p>

THE SUBVERSIVE FAMILY

Mount, Ferdinand

Parenting & Relationships

Free Press

Ferdinand Mount argues that society is shaped by a series of powerful revolutionary movements, the leaders of which, whether they be political ideologues, theologians, feudal lords or feminist writers, have done their utmost to render the family a subordinate instrument of their purpose but that, in spite of it all, the family endures. Mount maintains that many widely held contemporary beliefs about the family are based on a wilful misreading of the evidence: among the myths are that arranged marriages were the norm until this century; that child care is a modern innovation; that in earlier societies children were treated as expendable objects; that the nuclear family is not a 20th-century invention; and that romantic love never existed before the troubador poets glorified adultery. Divorce, he contends, is no great novelty either, he shows that in many times and places it has been almost as easy to obtain as it is today. Far from diminishing the general desire and respect for family life, Mount contends that the provision for divorce has been popularly regarded as an integral part of any sensible system of family law. This study should jolt the reader into a re-assessment of one of the most familiar and ancient institutions, and encourage greater consideration for policies today that support the family.

The Subversive Family: An Alternative History of Love and Marriage

Unwin Hyman

How does Jeremiah Mount, the dealer in pornography, come to be the lover of the Duchess of Albemarle and the colleague of the great Samuel Pepys In Pepys' Diary, Jem Mount plays a shadowy role, but in Jem's own memories Sam looms large. Friends and drinking partners at first, they become vicious rivals for fame and women. In his struggle to survive and triumph over his adversary in a rackety world, Jemm stumbles into many trades: chemist, butler, soldier, secretary and, now and then, lover.This 'newly discovered autobiography' - with its disconcerting echoes of our own time - takes its dubious hero from the shaky days of Cromwellian England, through the unbuttoned license of the Restoration, to the panic of Monmouth's Rebellion and the Jamaica sugar boom.

Jem (and Sam)

Literature & Fiction

Contemporary

Vintage

The Man Who Rode Ampersand

VINTAGE (RAND)

Physical description; 282 pages ; 23 cm. Subjects; Families - History. Love - history. Marriage - history.

The Subversive Family: An Alternative History of Love & Marriage

Jonathan Cape Ltd.

Quite how Joseph Dudgeon Follows becomes one of the top 50 tycoons in the country before he is 30 is bewildering. The narrator - who meets him at a peculiar seaside clinic - is alternately humiliated and betrayed as he follows his exasperating friend through his giddy rise and giddier fall.

Of Love and Asthma

William Heinemann, Ltd.

Liquidator

RANDOM HOUSE UK

Subversive Family

British politician and writer, Ferdinand Mount, challenges contemporary beliefs about society and family—including the history of divorce, childcare, and the concept of the nuclear family.In Subversive Family, politician and writer Ferdinand Mount argues that society is shaped by a series of powerful revolutionary movements, the leaders of which, whether they be political ideologues, theologians, feudal lords, or feminist writers, have done their utmost to render the family a subordinate instrument of their purpose but that, in spite of it all, the family endures. Mount maintains that many widely held contemporary beliefs about the family are based on a willful misreading of the evidence: among the myths are that arranged marriages were the norm until this century; that child care is a modern innovation; that in earlier societies children were treated as expendable objects; that the nuclear family is not a 20th-century invention; and that romantic love never existed before the troubador poets glorified adultery. Divorce, he contends, is no great novelty either, he shows that in many times and places it has been almost as easy to obtain as it is today. Far from diminishing the general desire and respect for family life, Mount contends that the provision for divorce has been popularly regarded as an integral part of any sensible system of family law. This study should jolt the reader into a re-assessment of one of the most familiar and ancient institutions, and encourage greater consideration for policies today that support the family.

Politics & Social Sciences

Anthropology

Random House Value Publishing

Very Like a Whale

Literary

Faber and Faber

'We're a group, like in Mary McCarthy', says one of the girls in the Clique. On the other hand, their style may remind you more of Evelyn Waugh's Bright Young Things. And their know-all panache has a touch of J. D. Salinger's quiz-kid Glass family. But The Clique is unmistakably a satire for its own time.Gunby Goater, an up-and-coming reporter, 'hot or at any rate warmish' from the provinces, arrives in Fleet Street, keen for a taste of the fabulous Sixties. His assignment at the deathbed of the Last Great Englishman leads him into a series of adventures with the Clique, who alternately humiliate and delight him.From the author of The Man Who Rode Ampersand, The Clique is a novel of exuberant wit trained sharply, though not without affection, upon a variety of phonies, conmen, topers and hacks.

The Clique: A Novel of the Sixties

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