50 Irresistible True Accounts of Love in the Twenty-first Century.

A young woman wryly describes a relationship that races from start to finish almost entirely via text messages.

A Casanova is jilted after an idyllic three weeks and learns the hard way that the woman is, well, just not that into him.

An overweight woman in a sexless marriage wrestles with the rules of desire.

A young man recounts the high-wire act of sharing the woman he loves with both her husband and another boyfriend.

A female sergeant in the Missouri National Guard, fresh from Iraq, tells what she is not supposed to tell about the woman she is not allowed to love.

These are just a few of the people whose stories are included in Modern Love, a collection of the fifty most revealing, funny, stirring essays from the New York Times's popular "Modern Love" column. Editor Daniel Jones has arranged these tales to capture the ebb and flow of relationships, from seeking love and tying the knot to having children and finding love that endures. (Cynics and melancholics can skip right to the section on splitting up.) Taken together, these essays show through a modern lens how love drives, haunts, and enriches us.

For anyone who's loved, lost, stalked an ex, or made a lasting connection, and for the voyeur in all of us, Modern Love is the perfect match.

From the Trade Paperback edition.