Us: Americans Talk About Love

by John Bowe

US, a collection of fascinating love stories from across America, as told to the oral historian John Bowe From the wards of New Orleans to the cornfields of Iowa to the slopes of Colorado, from the raves of Los Angeles to the hollows of Appalachia and the canyons of Wall Street, Americans talk about love. Tortured teenagers, free-spirited octogenarians, anxious Navy wives, blue-blooded bohemians, horny-but-chaste pastors, and multiply-partnered cosmopolitans tell extraordinary tales of broken hearts; sexual infidelities; improbable reconciliations; hidden, forbidden, preposterous love; and endurance against all odds. These are America's real love stories—wise and foolish, comic and tragic, full of surprises and straight from the heart.

Genres: Nonfiction, Essays, Sociology, Relationships, Journalism, Memoir, Romance

450 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 5, 2010

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.

John Bowe (born 1964) has contributed to The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, GQ, The American Prospect, National Public Radios This American Life, McSweeneys, and others. He is the co-editor of Gig: Americans Talk About Their Jobs, one of Harvard Business Reviews best books of 2000, and co-screenwriter of the film Basquiat. In 2004, he received the J. Anthony Lukas Work-in-Progress Award, the Sydney Hillman Award for journalists, writers, and public figures who pursue social justice and public policy for the common good, and the Richard J. Margolis Award, dedicated to journalism that combines social concern and humor.

Reviews

[Karine · Rating 4 out of 5]

Aptly named, this collection of 44 interviews is a fascinating portrayal of diversity of human experience. While the subject of the interviews is love, the book is about relating to people whose lives are very different from your own. One is homeless; another survived the Khmer Rouge; some are addicted to drugs; others are extremely religious. Different ages, finances, attitudes, obstacles, and relationships. Like some of the interviews, the book goes on too long, but it creates a beautiful portrait.

[Kirsti · Rating 4 out of 5]

I didn't know that it's possible to get divorced entirely by email (at least in New York state). And I didn't know that the Khmer Rouge used to round up young people and marry them off to each other randomly, and anybody who complained about it got killed. I learned a lot from this book, which is an oral history that focuses on love, romance, dating, and heartbreak.

"He scooped out my heart like a cantaloupe." --Celia Menendez, age 17

"I never know what Nick is going to be thinking or reading or wondering about, and it's intoxicating." --Cate Carvajal, age 58

"If there's such a thing as an afterlife, I hope I can spend it with her." --Paul Pesce, age 83

"My first marriage, it was just circumstantial." --Kelly Cumberland, age 30

"Love that grows out of something like what we have is stable and deeper than love at first sight." --Dina Kohler, who met her second husband when he showed up at her home to tell her that his wife was having an affair with her husband

"He said he was leaving. And I said, 'Oh?' And I said, 'When?' " --Dory Spence, age 66, who divorced and remarried her husband

"I remember the day--this was years after we divorced--my daughter called me and says, 'I know you don't care, but Clyde had a heart attack and died while he was out jogging.' And honest to God, I thought, 'Son of a bitch, I'll never be able to run him over.' "--Betty Anne May, age 80

[Khris Sellin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved this book. It's a series of interviews with people living in the U.S., from all walks of life, talking about L-O-V-E. Some of them are sweet, some sad, heartbreaking, funny, cute, crazy, infuriating, amazing...

It starts off with a 5-year-old girl talking about her great love, Lukey, and how he disappointed her. "He lied to me. He said he could hold his breath for three days and three nights. And he really didn't do it. That's impossible."

Then there's the teenage girl who is hung up on that one guy and he seemingly systematically dates all her friends before noticing her and ultimately ends up breaking her heart. Most of us can relate. If we can remember back that far.

And the couple from Cambodia who were randomly chosen to live together as man and wife by the Khmer Rouge. If they didn't obey this order, they both would've been killed.

It ends with Betty Anne May, 80 years old, talking about how lucky she was to have found two great loves - her husband of 24 years, Bill, who died of cancer, and after that her boyfriend of 12 years, Ed. They were completely different men in every way but she found joy & love with each of them. But now she's done. She's happy on her own. "I've had a varied life and a good life. Another piece of ass isn't worth the problems!"
Hilarious.

[Ebony · Rating 4 out of 5]

Life kept getting in the way of me finishing this wonderful book. Once I finally finished, I was really sad that there weren't more versions of love from various people around the country. Almost immediately, I noticed myself judging folks, though. I felt bad about it like who am I to say that this is or isn't love, but then I realized that's the point of the book. We all have to find our own paths to love and our own strategies for recognition. Other people's stories are an easy way to decide what we do and don't want without the heartbreak. I loved how everyone wasn't in bliss. I love how some folks found real love multiple times. The organization of the book was really counterintuitive. The author was interested in the length of time that passed since folks realized they were in love. That was weird to me, but the folks in the 15-20 mark seemed the least happy. The young and the very old were, in my opinion, the best at being in love. Not everyone disclosed their race, but I wish there were more recognizably black stories. Perhaps, that's my next project.

[Jillian C. · Rating 4 out of 5]

this book has a lot of interesting perspectives on love. some are cute, some are strange, some are gross. the book claims that the samples were meant to be as diverse as possible, but that’s definitely not true. there’s not a ton of lgbtq representation but there is a ton of christian representation, but whatever.

i have a hard time believing that so many people have almost nothing nice to say about love, but who knows? so yeah some of it was a real downer, but there are touching stories as well. basically some of the editing decisions are just questionable.

i do feel like the good stories do outweigh the bad though.

[Bethany · Rating 1 out of 5]

I'm going to stop thinking I can read nonfiction books that don't come with a "j" for "juvenile" in front of the Dewey numbers. I just can't finish them. I got about halfway through this book before I realized I was bored out of my mind. I mean, the premise sounds so awesome; it's a collection of monologues from ordinary folks about relationships they've been in. And if there's anything I enjoy, it's reading about other people's deeply personal thoughts and feelings, ESPECIALLY re: their failures.

The problem here was that too many of the interviews were like, "Oh, I just loved how she loved God" (which isn't my thing) or "Oh, I loved him, he was so hot, but he did too much crack" (also not my thing) or "Well, she cheated on me three times with my bff, my dad, and my brother, but I think if I had been then the person that I am now, we could've made it work. I'll always love her."

I picked it up because I read an excerpt, one of the interviews, in Slate (my thing. Totally my thing), about a polyamorous couple (not...exactly my thing? But totally awesome to read about). It was kind of dirty (hey, don't judge me), and there was lots of swearing. All good love stories include a lot of swearing. My own personal love story includes crazy-obscene amounts of swearing. But, as it turns out, that interview was the ONLY INTERESTING ONE IN THE BOOK.

Uh, okay, in the first half of the book. I'm not finishing this one.

[Ushan · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really like Bowe's Gig: Americans Talk about Their Jobs from 2000, which is a collection of short first-person interviews with over 100 Americans, from an Air Force general to a professional crime scene cleaner, about their jobs. This one has interviews with over 40 Americans, aged 5 to 86, about the most important love of their lives. Most people have prosaic love lives: they fall in love, marry, have children and raise them. Some have more unusual ones. A mother of three, an aerobics instructor married to a born-again Christian Republican farmer, falls in love with a woman client of hers, has sex with her, and has an orgasm for the first time in her life. A man who grew up in poverty in rural Tennessee sleeps with two sisters at the same time, and marries one; after he goes on a shrimp boat to make money, his wife sleeps with his brother, so his children's sister is also their cousin. An English waitress in New York City dumps an Italian count for an illegal Brazilian busboy with no formal education. Love is one of the most important parts of a person's life, like a job, but the subject of this book is not jobs but love.

[Jesse · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was the result of years of research and hard work on the part of John Bowe and several others who interviewed men and women of various ages, ethnicities, religions, economic backgrounds, sexual preferences, and geographic locations about their relationships, loves, and/or marriages. The book is separated by the length of time the couple has been together. It was utterly fascinating to read and experience these different relationships through the eyes of all these different Americans.

Some were happily married for decades, others pining for a lost spouse, others divorced but still working with and caring about their ex. It shows that love grows, changes, gets stronger, or falls apart and how many different faces it can have. It’s in the best friends who have been married for 30 years, in the teenager pining for the guy who never treated her right, the twentysomething student who is with a spoiled redneck, and with the grown woman who had 2 great loves and both of them gave her incredibly different lives.

[Karen · Rating 3 out of 5]

So I originally intended to give this book 1 star. I got a third of the way through the book and couldn't read anymore. The authors of this book went around and interviewed a bunch of people to get stories that purportedly illustrated the concept of “love”. The first third dealt with new relationships and I found it extremely depressing. It was chock-full of seriously messed up people and their sad and pointless tales of self-destruction which was not at all what I was looking for.

However when I went to write my review I noticed a few other reviews that had the same complaint as me but also said there were some gems later in the book so I gave it another chance and I am really glad I did. There were some much richer stories in the mid-section of the book once it started dealing with longer relationships. If anyone is interested in reading this book I'd suggest reading the first bit of each story and skipping those that don't appeal to you, especially at the beginning and end of the book.

[Patty · Rating 2 out of 5]

It has only been a few hours since I finished this book and as I look back, I wonder why I bothered. It was not a terrible book, but it wasn't worth as much time as I gave it. It is over 400 pages and I was in the middle of other books, so this did take me awhile to be done.

The premise is good. Ask people to tell you about the person they have loved the most and then listen. The interviewers got some interesting stories. I just felt like them managed to miss hearing ordinary stories.

Where are all the gays and lesbians who have long term relationships, not multiple relationships? What happened to people who haven't done drugs, or fallen in love in their teens or didn't have a lot of sturm und drang in their love affairs? I am exaggerating, but I felt like too many of the people interviewed had unusual lives. Maybe that is what you need to sell the book.

I guess I was expecting these essays to resemble my favorite Storycorps radio broadcasts. I know this book will appeal to lots of people, but it didn't tell the stories I was looking for.

[Laura · Rating 3 out of 5]

Okay, so here's the thing: this was completely not what I expected it to be. I'm not sure exactly what I thought I would be reading, but I didn't expect I would be reading transcriptions of interviews about love. Having said that, there were some beautiful words that were said by the individuals whom John Bowe interviewed. Some were poignant, some were not. Though there were a wide variety of stories, the majority of the loves described were between heterosexual couples. I think there was room for a little more variety in this work, though it certainly represented a diversity of perspectives.

Truth be told, I'm not sure I ever got over the fact that it was interviews, and not a broader work with the interwoven stories. Had there been more than an introduction to tie everything together, I might have enjoyed it more. Having said that, I still found it to be an interesting read--it was just different than I expected it to be, and I think I expected it to be more than it was.

[K Dog · Rating 2 out of 5]

A collection of love stories or what the people who contributed to this book call love stories. The book is broken up into sections the beginning focus is on young relationships from one week to 1 year and then goes up to 60 plus years.

The stories of the young couples / relationships or people in loving relationships were not the happy mushy love stories that I was expecting. It is really eye opening to see what another persons version of love is. I was appalled at some of the stories in the earlier chapters, some of the stories had me wondering where did they find these characters. But love means something different to everyone and my definition my not match someone else's.

Thankfully there were a few truly romantic stories to which I personally connected and no it is not the ultra corny one in the beginning with the proposal in the snow, that one almost made me loose my lunch like a Nicolas Sparks novel.

[Rachel McCready-Flora · Rating 5 out of 5]

When I first picked up Us: Americans Talk About Love at the library in July, I was skeptical. Most books about love aren't great. I have to admit, the only reason it went home with me was the blurb by Ira Glass on the back (host of This American Life, my very favorite radio show).

Us: Americans Talk About Love is a book of interviews from almost every demographic in the United States. The interviews are edited thoughtfully, and many of them are thought provoking. Some stories about love were sad; hearing about how badly some people let others treat them, for example, is difficult to read. And I don't think I will ever forget the interview with the gentleman who saw his wife die when Katrina hit New Orleans.

There were stories about love starting, love ending, each person defining what love is through their experiences and ideas. There is something very beautiful and profound about this.

[Elle · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is not the kind of book that you read like a novel. I was never really good with vignettes or short stories unless I was doing an author study or a theme. This book discusses the love stories collected through oral storytelling throughout the United States. It was interesting. At times, it is hard to read the transcription because the people are not professional novelists or storytellers. This would be interesting to read with an editor but as is, it was not as fun as I thought it would be. This is the kind of book you buy and you put it in the bathroom and every time you go, you read another little story or so. It was okay. This is an honest assessment on my part. I feel like there are others who would think better of it but it was not the type of book that I needed at this point in my life.

[Dorie · Rating 3 out of 5]

US was a series of true stories of love from people of all ages, races and backgrounds across America. Each story seemed like it could have been a little vignette in a movie; some were hilarious, some were sad and others were outrageous. The book is long so it gets a little boring after a while and I found that many of the people in the book were Christians, abusive/abused, drug addicted or had cheated on their significant other. I wondered if the author hand picked these particular stories because they were more interesting, or if love really is never normal and picture perfect. OK, there were a few picture perfect love stories which lifted my spirits but one ended in death of a spouse. Jeez.

[Julian · Rating 4 out of 5]

Real life accounts of romantic relationships, broken down into sections based on longevity, 3-5 years and all the way up to over 60 years together, with a little section at the end for multiple relationships. A married mother of three, realizes she's gay, a raver couple share a dope habit, a man loses his wife of 15 years during hurricane Katrina, a polyamorous couple explains jealousy, and a lonely barfly is content to die alone. Maybe this isn't the best review, but being a huge fan of non-fiction, I have to say some of these people's stories are really a pleasure to read, and it makes you feel like they are telling you their stories in person.

[Willow · Rating 2 out of 5]

If anything, I ended up feeling more confused about this whole idea of "love." I guess it simply goes on to show that it's way too complex, although some stories prove just the opposite. For a subway read, it was definitely entertaining. The story that stuck out to me the most, was about the Mexican lady who simply wouldn't leave her bum of a man alone lol. I mean, her determination and endurance was really quite something. I didn't believe her when she said she doesn't love him any more, not one bit. Like he said, she does love him, and she loves him a lot because no one else ever did what she did for him. Okay, too many "dids'" time for bed. Shaloom, shaloom.

[Valerie · Rating 2 out of 5]

If you're looking for a warm, fuzzy read about love, this isn't it. It was difficult (sometimes outright impossible) to relate to any of the interviewees, and I found myself often wondering if this was truly an accurate cross-section of the population of the United States. There were an extraordinary number of stories involving drug-addicts and cheaters, and the ones that weren't either of those were religious fanatics (this is, of course, a bit hyperbolic) Some stories were nice, but too many others were so extreme that they didn't feel authentic - which just made me feel frustrated and bored. Skip it.

[Bex · Rating 2 out of 5]

I thought the first 2/3rds was awful. Depressing.

The book actually gave me insecurity nightmares featuring my husband taking on the roles of these horrible stories. I had problems sleeping for like 2 weeks- and it was because Iw as reading a story or two or three right before falling asleep.

What a mistake.

The end was the only thing that I enjoyed, but old people love stories is just that "pull on heart strings" sort of thing. I wish there were less extreme stories in here- include the extreme, but maybe a normal American who didn't fall out of love so miserably.

[Diana · Rating 5 out of 5]

I helped conduct some of these interviews and during the process, which can also be taken by reading the book itself, I realized that throughout all of the states, cities, etc... the impact of love on a person's life is one-if not THE-most weighty factor in the span of our existence. Although you can see common threads within the stories of each individual, the way they speak and the way they are allowed to react to each scenario makes for a completely unique read.

[Stephanie]

It's not as good as Gig (by same editors), and I wouldn't describe what some of the interview subjects describe as "love." And frankly the youngest and oldest interviewees were a bit dull. But overall this is an absorbing collection of Studs Terkel-esque interviews. The variety of voices is amazing--novelists can only aspire to capture how people really speak. A good book to borrow from the library and pick up and put down.

[Phobean · Rating 5 out of 5]

"US, America's Talk About Love" is a conversation with 44+ different people about their experience with romantic (and otherwise) love. It is a gem, a therapy, a craziness, a heartbreak, and a hoot. It's a little like NPR and a little like MTV. Possibly the most well-edited book of this type I've ever read -the editor's work is artful and quiet, you don't even know he's there. I highly recommend this book.

[Alex · Rating 5 out of 5]

A beautiful but sometimes hopeless account of human relationships and feeling. Some of these stories caused me to go completely numb and lose hope temporarily, before the next story would restore my faith in the power and possibility of love. Loneliness and death of a loved one has never seemed more real than in this book. I absolutely adore how real every last testimonial was, from the smitten and teenaged to the old, wise and still-dreamy.

[Michelle · Rating 5 out of 5]

After 15 years of voraciously reading romance novels, this is the most interesting and important book I have ever read concerning love. It shows it in all its imperfect glory, in far more guises than I ever would have guessed. Humans are odd creatures, you can't deny that. But we can't help but connect with one another, no matter how we do it. This is a must-read, for everyone. Not just a book for chicks at all.

[Daniel R. · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book isn't about fairytale love. This book is about love being complex, crazy, heart-rending, and at the same time comforting, profound, and heartwarming. The stories reflect the melting pot that is America touching on generational, cultural, and ethical differences of what people consider and call love.

[Brooxie · Rating 2 out of 5]

A series of stories/essays about people in love. It actually makes you feel better about you relationship! Most of the stories are kind of wierd and there were only about 3 that I thought looked appealin, but it lets you see what else is out there. I read this several months ago and all I can remember now are the disturbing stories!

[jennn · Rating 4 out of 5]

It was a good reading about people's experience on what love means to them. I was entertained and some okay changed my perspective on what is love for me. There were good stories and of course tedious stories. In a sociological perspective I understand how society affects love as well. Overall it was good.

[Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

A candid recounting of romantic relationships, which I found insightful. Their experiences range from deep and permanent, to drunken, drugged, and pathetic. The book is arranged by how long ago the love occurred, so the end is generally better than the beginning.

[Paulette · Rating 2 out of 5]

Another startrib recommendation.

I had hoped this would be like The Eye of My Heart, grandmothers writing about being grandparents--some bitter, some funny, some sweet.
No so. Too much weirdness, drugs, selfishness, yuck.....

[Lara · Rating 3 out of 5]

A really interesting read. I am a total voyeur for everyday people's observations/life stories and a mark for pretty much any smart story about love (suck it, haters), so this was a great book for me. Very well curated collection.