It is the fire of love, the pulsating rush of passion, the whisper of lovers, and the irresistible magic that drives the holiest of men mad. This magic, sung by Homer in the Iliad, has ignited wars, destroyed dynasties, toppled kingdoms, and produced some of the world's finest literature and art. People sing for love, kill for love, live for love, and die for love. So what is the cause of all this magic and sorcery?

What is love? Why do we love? What happens to us when we fall in love? These seemingly unanswerable questions, however, Helen Fisher decided to search for answers in human records written about love throughout history. These records are filled with tales, poems, and myths that reflect each group's understanding of love, its ways of expressing it, and the psychological state of the beloved. She also investigated the human body as a factory for the chemical transformations that occur to the person who owns this body immediately after falling in love, by conducting a scan on the brains of more than forty men and women who had fallen in love, and taking 144 pictures of the brain activity of each of them. In addition, she studied the nature of love in different cultures and races, to discover the depth of romantic love’s roots in the chemistry and architecture of the human brain, and the existence of evidence of romantic love among most peoples, and she arrived at astonishing results that she discusses in this exciting book.