The word, Eros, names not only a Greek god of love, but also an asteroid! What does an ecstatic filled epiphany of empathic compassionate fulfillment have to do with a hard and lifeless, rocky chunk of matter? Eros: Faces of Love fearlessly enters the spiral labyrinth of this paradox. With penetratingly tender reflection and bold confessional scrutiny, the author ponders whether love is the arrival of a “longed for gift” or the disaster of “an unexpected meteor”. As sensual descriptions reveal the ecstatic delight of “islands of paradise”, passionate metaphors uncover rocky “hidden coves of scorn”. Can unsettled dreams temper the hectic race to make space ‘to love’? Can fond remembrances call one home to rest and simply let space open ‘for love’? Eros: Faces of Love opens the space of the heart for both the lover and the beloved to find out.

Analyzes the feelings and problems involved in different types of human love, including familial affection, friendship, passion, and charity.

The celebrated author of Theology of the Body Explained andTheology of the Body for Beginners offers compelling insights into Pope Benedict’s profound teaching on human and divine love. The Love That Satisfies is for all - whether married, single, or religious - who are seeking the face of true love in a wounded world. In The Love That Satisfies, Christopher West turns to the wisdom of both Popes Benedict XVI and John Paul II in order to shed some light on sexual love (eros) and its relationship with divine love (agape). Why is the love between man and woman so attractive and elusive, demanding and rewarding, restrictive and liberating, painful and ecstatic, messy and beautiful, maddening and fulfilling? Our world is saturated with sex but remains starved for love. Why? Perhaps as Waylon Jennings put it, we’re “Lookin' for love in all the wrong places, lookin' for love in too many faces.” Where, then, is the right place and whose, then, is the right face in which to look for love? By reflecting on key passages from Pope Benedict’s grand encyclical Deus Caritas Est, this book explores these and many other questions with the goal of pointing all who read it towards the love that satisfies. Those who give Pope Benedict’s teaching the attention it deserves will discover that the Catholic Church has a vision of sexual love far more glorious than anything Sigmund Freud, Hugh Hefner, Britney Spears, or Howard Stern could dream of or imagine. You doubt? This book will make you a believer.

[Eros Is More] is a beautifully masterful collection. - Aracelis Girmay

The Four Loves is a 1960 book by C. S. Lewis which explores the nature of love from a Christian and philosophical perspective through thought experiments. The book was based on a set of radio talks from 1958 which had been criticized in the U.S. at the time for their frankness about sex. C.S. Lewis examines storge or empathy love; philia, friendship love; eros, romantic love; and agape, or God love. Excerpt: "GOD is love," says St. John. When I first tried to write this book I thought that his maxim would provide me with a very plain highroad through the whole subject. I thought I should be able to say that human loves deserved to be called loves at all just in so far as they resembled that Love which is God."

Toward the end of the Mesopotamian Epic of Gilgamesh King, Gilgamesh laments the untimely death of his comrade Enkidu, 'my friend whom I loved dearly'. This book examines the stories' sexual and homoerotic language and suggests that its ambiguity provides fresh ways of understanding ideas of gender and sexuality in the ancient Near East.