Sex and Real Estate: Why We Love Houses

By Marjorie Garber

Book Overview

Cultural historian Marjorie Garber offers incisive and witty commentary on what men and women today really want in her enlightening study of what may be the most meaningful relationship any of us will... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0385720394
• ISBN13: 9780385720397
• Release Date: September 2001
• Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
• Length: 256 Pages
• Weight: 0.50 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.6" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

A serious academic considers the passion for real estate

As an experienced real estate broker who has watched many souls fall in and out of love with their houses, myelf included, I congratulate Professor Garber for digging more deeply into our national passtime, our passion and now, our only pension fund. No other serious scholar has bothered. How can this be? Just as "Freakonomics" unpacked our secret, self-defeating relationships with money, Garber reveals our profound need for house-love in its many forms. Home buying and home making are deliciously Erotic fantasies in the most classical, general sense of Eros, of course, but I'd like to add, before you sign a title document, committing yourself to buying that darling cottage or marring that darling guy, take a look at this witty, scholarly book.

House and Home

For those interested in the difference between house and home, this IS the book. Not only is it an intense review of the comparison of house and home, but it tackles the topic of the contemporary obsession with the past and instant tradition. References a lot of literary texts as well as psycho-analytical studies and "Emily Post" style writings.

Frivolous but fun

While I sympathise with the earnest souls who criticised Garber for failing to look at homelessness, disability and the spread of AIDS in this book, I also wonder if their senses of humour have died. Yes, the book is frothy, but it's funny, too - the stories are hilarious even if they do deal with the baser, greedier side of middle-class and middle-aged aspirations. And in chronicling those ugly yearnings to excel, Garber shows us - without labouring it - where the greed that generates a refusal to spend tax dollars on the poor has its home. Meanwhile, the humourless get what they deserve with earnest but boneheaded stuff like Shakespeare and the Invention of the Human.