All About Love Book Summary - All About Love Book explained in key points

Listen to the Intro

00:00

All About Love summary

Name: All About Love
Rating: 4.5 (164 reviews)
Author: bell hooks

bell hooks

New Visions

4.5 (164 ratings)

14 mins

Brief summary

All About Love by bell hooks explores love beyond the realm of mere romance. It delves into how love forms the root of happiness, self-worth, compassion, and social justice. It encourages us to approach love with intention, respect, and vulnerability.

Topics

Love

Table of Contents

All About Love
Summary of 6 key ideas

Audio & text in the Blinkist app

Key idea 1 of 6

What’s in it for me? Learn how to enhance your relationships by looking at love differently.

It begins when we're children. Fairy tales, the media, the romantic stories of older relatives – all teach us the same thing: that love has the power to change our lives for the better. But love seems to be lacking in our current world – a lot of people feel cynical about it, and as a culture, our focus is more on power and materialism. This, however, hasn’t stopped many of us from continuing to look for love, even if we do so hopelessly.

But the problem isn’t that love is hard to find; it’s that we don’t really know what it is in the first place.

In these blinks, you’ll discover the flaws not just in our ideas of what love is, but also in what we expect to gain from it and how we look for it. You’ll gain the knowledge to rebuild your understanding of love and transform your approach to it going forward – from family bonds to the relationships you have with yourself and others.

In these blinks, you’ll discover

why loving feelings enable hurtful actions;
how a simple life can make room for more love; and
the important lessons you can learn from your friends.

We need to change our definition of love.

What’s a topic we’re all familiar with, one that can be found in the movies we watch, the books we read, and the songs we sing along to? If you’re guessing love, then you’re spot on. But despite being surrounded by images of, and ideas about love, a lot of us have a flawed understanding of what it is exactly. This makes finding love in our own lives a lot harder.

We tend to think of love as strong affection for family, friends, or romantic partners. However, the problem with focusing on that feeling is that we ignore the choices and actions that are necessary for love to truly flourish. In some cases, this emphasis on the feeling even causes us to overlook or excuse actions that are clearly devoid of love. Just consider the fact that many people who are mistreated in relationships insist that they love their partners and their partners love them.

This idea that we’re loved even when we’re being hurt isn’t only associated with romantic relationships; we actually learn it as children. Many parents discipline their children with physical punishment or shouting while still maintaining that they love them. Because of this, children become adults who believe that it’s okay for those who claim to love them to mistreat them.

If we want to truly know love, we need to understand it not just as a feeling, but also as a verb. The author suggests a definition shared by many psychologists and theorists before her: that love is the active nurturing of spiritual growth in ourselves and others.

When we think of love in this way, we start looking for acts of love that we can perform – rather than relying only on feelings – and we create a society that’s less tolerant of abuse and neglect in any kind of relationship.

Our culture encourages dishonesty and celebrates materialism, making it difficult for us to experience love.

Imagine you’re creating an online dating profile. You’ve got a great picture next to all your interesting hobbies, and now you have to list your qualities. What are the chances that you’ll describe yourself as someone who lies? Slim, right?

We’ve been raised with the notion that lying is wrong – but strangely enough, when it comes to relationships, our society actually encourages men and women to lie to each other.

Self-love and spirituality are the foundations for loving relationships with others and the wider world.

How many times have you heard that people need to love themselves first before they can love others? This advice is repeated over and over again by well-meaning friends and family, psychologists, and self-help books. And the truth is, they all have a point.

When we love ourselves and nurture our own growth, we can then do the same for others. This sets the stage for positive relationships. However, self-love isn’t something that we’re born knowing how to do; we have to work to learn it.

Experiencing community, in the form of family and friendships, teaches us how to love.

If you were asked to list the members of your family, where would you start and end? Most people just think of their nuclear family, meaning their parents and any siblings. This is because society tends to emphasize the nuclear family while ignoring extended family – the grandparents, aunts, uncles, and the like, who form a community that each of us is born into.

Communities are ideal spaces to learn how to love. By disregarding the community of extended family, we lower the chances of children experiencing love. In isolated nuclear families, women might start to depend only on their husbands, while children become totally dependent on their mothers. This creates a setting where abuse and neglect can occur unchecked.

Mutual growth through sharing, communicating, and honesty is at the core of love.

Say you’re having coffee with a friend, and the topic of relationships comes up. You ask your friend what they want in a partner. They describe how they’d like to be treated and outline what they’d want their partner to do for them.

While it makes sense to expect to get something in our relationships, we often focus on this and ignore another important component: the fact that we also have to give. We all need to receive things like time, care, affection, and attention. And when partners give to each other generously so that both have their needs met, there is shared growth and nurturing in the relationship.

Believing that romantic love is not something we can control and that it should be easy creates unrealistic expectations.

When was the last time you watched a romcom, or read a romance novel – a few weeks ago? A few years? Either way, you’re probably familiar with the standard storyline: boy meets girl, and they inexplicably fall in love – neither has any control over the situation.

The idea that we don’t choose who we love doesn’t just exist in romcoms and books; many people expect their own romantic relationships to work that way. But accepting this lack of control stops us from being intentional in love; it prevents us from taking the time to figure out what we need in a partner and what we can offer that partner in return. Being selective in our romantic relationships gives us a better shot at choosing partners who are right for us, and with whom we can grow.

Want to see all full key ideas from All About Love?

Key ideas in All About Love

More knowledge in less time

Read or listen

Get the key ideas from nonfiction bestsellers in minutes, not hours.

Find your next read

Get book lists curated by experts and personalized recommendations.

Shortcasts ^New

We’ve teamed up with podcast creators to bring you key insights from podcasts.

What is All About Love about?

All About Love (2000) breaks down why love remains elusive for many of us. From our flawed understanding of what love is to our misguided expectations of romantic love, author bell hooks examines common barriers to love and explains the steps individuals need to take for society to become more loving and nurturing.

Best quote from All About Love

The love we make in community stays with us wherever we go.

—bell hooks

Who should read All About Love?

Introspective thinkers who want to understand love better
Community-minded people looking to improve their relationships
Anyone interested in gender roles and relationships

About the Author

bell hooks was a leading intellectual, writer, feminist, and cultural critic whose work focused on capitalism, gender, and race. At the age of 19, she began writing Ain’t I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism, which has become essential reading for those interested in the topics of racism and sexism. She went on to write more than 30 books, including Yearning: Race, Gender, and Cultural Politics, which won the American Book Award, and Salvation: Black People and Love, which was nominated for the Hurston Wright Legacy Award.

Categories with All About Love

Sex & Relationships Society & Culture

Book summaries like All About Love

Braiding Sweetgrass

Robin Wall Kimmerer

Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants

Black Women and Feminism

The Nature and Chemistry of Romantic Love

How To Stay Crazy In Love When Your Love Drives You Crazy

The classic guide to love

What We Should Know about the People We Don’t Know

A Sociological Explanation

Build the Life You Want

Arthur C. Brooks & Oprah Winfrey

The Art and Science of Getting Happier

How to Talk to Anyone

Leil Lowndes

92 Little Tricks for Big Success in Relationships

25 min

4.2

Boundaries for Leaders

Henry Cloud

Take Charge of Your Business, Your Team, and Your Life

A True Story of Love, Crime, and a Dangerous Obsession

An examination of the amoral game and techniques of seducers

19 min

4.0

Conscious Uncoupling

Katherine Woodward Thomas

5 Steps to Living Happily Even After

23 min

4.1

Understanding Artificial Intelligence

Nicolas Sabouret

A Straightforward Explanation of AI and Its Possibilities

16 min

4.3

Plays Well with Others

Eric Barker

The Surprising Science Behind Why Everything You Know about Relationships Is (Mostly) Wrong

How I Curbed My Anxiety and Conquered a Lifetime of Panic Attacks

Technology, Power, and the Twenty-first Century's Greatest Dilemma

Your War with a New Financial World Order and How to Fight Back

The Revolutionary New Science of Romantic Relationships

The Secret to Charging Full Speed Toward Every Opportunity

The Science of Conversation

25 min

4.1

Nonviolent Communication

Marshall B. Rosenberg

In Search of Erotic Intelligence

24 min

4.5

Put Happiness to Work

Eric Karpinski

7 Strategies to Elevate Engagement for Optimal Performance

Simple Truths for Going Easier on Yourself, Embracing Imperfection & Loving Your Way to a Better Life

Transforming Self-Sabotage Into Self-Mastery

16 min

4.6

The Architecture of Happiness

Alain de Botton

Explore the hidden links between buildings and our well being

16 min

3.9

The Body Keeps the Score

Bessel van der Kolk

Mind, Brain and the Body in the Transformation of Trauma

What You're Missing and Why It Matters

22 min

4.4

The Law of Attraction

Esther and Jerry Hicks

The Basics of the Teachings of Abraham

14 min

4.2

Killing the Witches

Bill O'Reilly & Martin Dugard

The Horror of Salem, Massachusetts

Get Out of Your Head and into Your Life

19 min

4.6

Democracy in America

Alexis de Tocqueville

Explore This Brilliant Analysis of American Democracy

Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men

Mindful lessons on love

21 min

4.3

The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work

John M. Gottman and Nan Silver

A Practical Guide from the Country’s Foremost Relationship Expert

20 min

4.3

A Hope More Powerful Than the Sea

Melissa Fleming

One Refugee's Incredible Story of Love, Loss, and Survival

20 min

Unscripted

MJ DeMarco

Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Entrepreneurship

19 min

4.3

I Thought It Was Just Me (but it isn’t)

Brené Brown

Making the Journey From “What Will People Think?” to “I Am Enough”

15 min

4.4

The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People

Stephen R. Covey

Powerful Lessons in Personal Change

23 min

4.7

Stop Walking on Eggshells

Paul T. Mason & Randi Kreger

Taking Your Life Back When Someone You Care about Has Borderline Personality Disorder

18 min

4.5

My Grandmother's Hands

Resmaa Menakem

Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies

The False Promise of Optimization

15 min

3.3

Emotional Intelligence

The feminist classic about how woman has been shaped into the “other” sex

The Journey Beyond Yourself

Upgrade Your Brain, Learn Anything Faster, and Unlock Your Exceptional Life

31 min

4.6

People ❤️ Blinkist

Sven O.

It's highly addictive to get core insights on personally relevant topics without repetition or triviality. Added to that the apps ability to suggest kindred interests opens up a foundation of knowledge.

Thi Viet Quynh N.

Great app. Good selection of book summaries you can read or listen to while commuting. Instead of scrolling through your social media news feed, this is a much better way to spend your spare time in my opinion.

Jonathan A.

Life changing. The concept of being able to grasp a book's main point in such a short time truly opens multiple opportunities to grow every area of your life at a faster rate.

Renee D.

Great app. Addicting. Perfect for wait times, morning coffee, evening before bed. Extremely well written, thorough, easy to use.