Heartbreak : a personal and scientific journey Cover Image

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Heartbreak : a personal and scientific journey

Williams, Florence 1967- (author.).

Summary: "Florence Williams explores the fascinating, cutting-edge science of heartbreak while seeking creative ways to mend her own. When her twenty-five-year marriage unexpectedly falls apart, journalist Florence Williams expects the loss to hurt. What she doesn't expect is that she'll end up in the hospital, examining close-up the way our cells listen to loneliness. She travels to the frontiers of the science of 'social pain' to learn why heartbreak hurts so much and why so much of the conventional wisdom about it is wrong. Searching for insight as well as personal strategies to game her way back to health, Williams tests her blood for genetic markers of grief, undergoes electrical shocks in a laboratory while looking at pictures of her ex, and ventures to the wilderness in search of awe as an antidote to loneliness. For readers of Wild and Lab Girl, Heartbreak is a remarkable merging of science and self-discovery that will change the way we think about loneliness, health, and what it means to fall in and out of love"--

Record details

ISBN: 9781324003489
ISBN: 1324003480
ISBN: 9781324003496
Physical Description: print
viii, 296 pages ; 24 cm
Edition: First edition.
Publisher: New York, NY : W. W. Norton & Company, [2022]
Copyright: ©2022

Content descriptions

Bibliography, etc. Note:

Includes bibliographical references.

Formatted Contents Note:

Introduction -- SHATTER -- Bridge to nowhere -- The heart -- Kindu kush -- A costly life event -- OG sin -- ALONE -- All pain is one malady: rejection -- Heartbreak hotel: grief -- Welcome to the eremocene: attachment -- Your cells are listening -- The body doesn't lie -- Shaggy birds -- The wizards of lonesome -- AWE -- Truth serum, part one -- High island: warmth -- Excuse my piloerection: the science of awe -- Split mountain -- Confluence -- The happiness that matters: social well-being -- Truth serum, part two -- The divorce drug -- Open sesame -- Man in the kastle: opioids, love, and the science of recovery -- The future of heartbreak -- The personality of the body -- A boat of lettuce.