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Heartbreak: A Personal and Scientific Journey Hardcover – February 1, 2022

by Florence Williams (Author)
4.4 4.4 out of 5 stars 385 ratings
Editors' pick Best Biographies & Memoirs
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A Smithsonian Best Science Book of 2022 • A Prospect Magazine Top Memoir of 2022 • A KCRW Life Examined Best Book of 2022

“Keen observer [and] deft writer” (David Quammen) Florence Williams explores the fascinating, cutting-edge science of heartbreak while seeking creative ways to mend her own.

When her twenty-five-year marriage suddenly falls apart, journalist Florence Williams expects the loss to hurt. But when she starts feeling physically sick, losing weight and sleep, she sets out in pursuit of rational explanation. 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.

Soon Williams finds herself on a surprising path that leads her from neurogenomic research laboratories to trying MDMA in a Portland therapist’s living room, from divorce workshops to the mountains and rivers that restore her. She tests her blood for genetic markers of grief, undergoes electrical shocks while looking at pictures of her ex, and discovers that our immune cells listen to loneliness. Searching for insight as well as personal strategies to game her way back to health, she seeks out new relationships and ventures into the wilderness in search of an extraordinary antidote: awe.

With warmth, daring, wit, and candor, Williams offers a gripping account of grief and healing. 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.

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Previous page
  1. Print length
    304 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    W. W. Norton & Company
  4. Publication date
    February 1, 2022
  5. Dimensions
    6.3 x 1.1 x 9.3 inches
  6. ISBN-10
    1324003480
  7. ISBN-13
    978-1324003489
  8. See all details
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Popular Highlights in this book
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  1. “People who are open to experience are cognitively wired to grow and learn and move on, to do something that feels transformative.”
    Highlighted by 287 Kindle readers
  2. Well-connected brains in these areas, she said, tend to be pretty good at processing stressful information and making narrative and personal sense of it. In other words, these drunk-on-beauty people know how to tell themselves a story when something confusing happens. The single emotion they share is awe.
    Highlighted by 232 Kindle readers
  3. Among the documented downstream effects of rejection, grief, and loneliness are fragmented sleep and fatigue, increased anxiety, poor impulse control, depression, cognitive decline, altered gene expression, and early death.
    Highlighted by 226 Kindle readers
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From the Publisher

An Amazon Best Book of the Month Biographies and Memoirs

Whoever has felt the blistering heat of a broken heart will thank Florence Williams.

Heartbreak: A personal and Scientific Journey

A courageous, whirlwind tale of healing and self-discovery Publishers Weekly

Editorial Reviews

Review

"[Readers] will learn as much from Williams’s intellectual rigor as from her fearlessness in surviving a broken heart."
― Sebastian Modak, New York Times Book Review

"In Heartbreak [Williams] reprises [the] determined, deep-dive reporting [of The Nature Fix], this time seeking the same healing for her shattered self... This is one of the joys of reading a gifted science journalist: You learn so much stuff without having to study it yourself... [A] wise and brave book."
― Marianne Szegedy-Maszak, Washington Post

"A masterful blend of investigative reporting and personal narrative, chock-full of fascinating insights, gorgeous nature writing and an ample helping of compassion (some of which Williams deservedly reserves for herself)."
― Alexis Burling, San Francisco Chronicle

"This innovative book will have you rooting for Williams to understand her own body’s pain―and, by extension, all of ours."
― Zibby Owens, Katie Couric Media

"An engrossing survey of the latest research on the cardiology, neurology and genomics of lost love punctuated by the author’s many experiments with healing... Williams’s journey through her pain is by turns wrenching, fascinating, funny, and, for so many of us, deeply relatable."
― Dana Dunham, Scientific American

"Fascinating."
― People Magazine

"As a guide to science, Williams is the best kind―a hot adventure-nerd goddess, by turns fascinating and funny. The real magic happens, however, when she turns that eye inward, revealing herself as destroyed, vulnerable, and tentatively optimistic, sometimes all at once."
― Elizabeth Hightower Allen, Outside

"This surprisingly frank and funny book is what happens when a formidable science journalist turns her powers of observation and inquiry on her own broken heart."
― Bonnie Tsui, author of Why We Swim

"What a powerful book. Williams captures the heartache of divorce and the crooked road back to living. Colorful, imaginative and poignant―Heartbreak tells a gripping story of courage, sex, and adventure packed with all the newest hard science on romance and attachment. I’ve studied love for over 40 years and I was taking notes. It’s a magnificent, wise, and remarkable read!"
― Helen Fisher, author of The Anatomy of Love

"Heartbreak by Florence Williams is a graceful account of losing a marriage and finding another way of being. With vulnerability and veracity, Williams seeks various modes of understanding the physicality of loss. Whoever has felt the blistering heat of a broken heart will thank Florence Williams for a clear moving river of discoveries"
― Terry Tempest Williams, author of Erosion

"I tore through this book, unable to do anything else. Even sleep. Florence Williams has taken the most common form of psychic pain––heartbreak, her heartbreak––and transformed it into a meditative masterwork on what it means to live a good life, with biological and genetic markers and dozens of scientific studies to back up her claims. Awe: remember this word. You will feel it at the end of this book, and it could save your life."
― Deborah Copaken, author of Ladyparts

About the Author

A contributing editor at Outside magazine, Florence Williams is the author of Breasts, winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and The Nature Fix. Her writing has appeared in the New York Times, National Geographic, and many other outlets. She lives in Washington, DC.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ W. W. Norton & Company (February 1, 2022)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 304 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1324003480
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1324003489
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.07 pounds
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.3 x 1.1 x 9.3 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.4 4.4 out of 5 stars 385 ratings

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Florence Williams

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Customer reviews

4.4 out of 5 stars
4.4 out of 5
385 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Erica S. Perl
5.0 out of 5 stars Honest, fascinating, and inspiring
Reviewed in the United States on March 10, 2022
Verified Purchase
Full disclosure: I know the author personally and I read some passages of this book during the drafting phase. However, when I read the published book, I was completely blown away by it. Florence Williams is such a smart and curious person, and such a brave and honest writer that I feel like I shouldn't have been surprised that she was able to create a book that is equal parts fascinating scientific journey and heart-breakingly honest chronicle of personal loss. It's an ambitious project and one that succeeds on all levels. I also learned that she created an enhanced audiobook that includes interviews with many of the people who appear in the book (both in a professional and personal capacity), so now I am planning to get that and listen to it, even though I've already read the book. I have never done that before, which should give you an idea of how impressed I am with this work. I also loved her previous book, THE NATURE FIX, so if you haven't read that, add it to your stack as well!
11 people found this helpful
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CaptainBill
4.0 out of 5 stars The Nature Fix Tees Up Heartbreak
Reviewed in the United States on April 4, 2024
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Although I am more of a wilderness type than a relationship guy, I enjoyed Florence's latest book so much I bought a copy for my neighbor Gillian whose husband ambled away with a new "Soulmate" last year.
One person found this helpful
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Don’t Look Back
5.0 out of 5 stars Well worth the read
Reviewed in the United States on June 4, 2023
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Relatable. I read this through and now know that I am not alone in what I feel and my reaction to one of the most stunning upsets in my life. And for that I am grateful to Ms. Williams for the courage and insight to write this book.
One person found this helpful
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yard man
5.0 out of 5 stars Condition description was accurate
Reviewed in the United States on January 14, 2024
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Although I frequently choose Kindle versions, I ordered the book for my personal use because it was priced well. Upon delivery, the condition of this used edition was exactly as specified in the store listing. I was pleased with everything from ordering to price to delivery time.
One person found this helpful
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CCGirl
3.0 out of 5 stars Meh. Nothing earth shattering here and I don't know that it will help those who are heartbroken.
Reviewed in the United States on March 25, 2022
I'm just going to say this up front, if you are a woman in menopause dealing with the aftermath of a breakup, what you are going to hear about is all her dating experience and how much estrogen she still has. Not helpful. The book ends up being the author's experience as a somewhat privileged person dealing with basic life situations and a research paper combined. Most of us have jobs, limited incomes, sparse dating prospects and dwindling estrogen. I think we've all read, heard or watched the story of someone's epic adventure after a breakup and this one really isn't that epic.
My final thought, she said she peed IN the river after the guide specifically said not to pee near the river. Enough said.
26 people found this helpful
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C.J. Shane
4.0 out of 5 stars 5 for science reporting, 3 for the memoir = 4 overall
Reviewed in the United States on August 10, 2022
*Heartbreak* is really two interwoven books. The author is a science journalist, and she does a very good job of reporting on the current scientific research regarding how stress, trauma, grief and misery affect the human body, its functioning and even its genetics. The second part is her recounting of her personal experience of “heartbreak” when her husband of 30 years leaves their marriage. We read in detail about her struggles, her health problems, her various experiments at trying to relieve her stress and misery, and how she emerges eventually into a place of greater peace and direction in her life.
Reading about the science of trauma was fascinating. However, what bothered me about this book was the author’s persistent attitude regarding her trauma. She indicated repeatedly that her husband was the one at fault and, therefore, he was the cause of all her misery. It is rarely that simple when a marriage falls apart. One of her friends, a biological anthropologist, notes that huge amounts of research have been done on the effects of heartbreak for those who are left behind, but almost none has been done on those who do the leaving. I immediately wondered, and still do, about the effects of a breakup on the person who ends an intolerable situation. I seriously doubt that the one who leaves just skips merrily away into a life of bliss. I strongly suspect that research would discover that the one who leaves is often just as beset with trauma as the one left behind. Why isn’t research being done on this?
Williams doesn’t attempt to explain her husband’s behavior, and yet, she is quite consistent in subtle jabs at him. When one of her friends suggests that she might have been complicit in the end of the marriage, Williams doesn’t seriously consider that until well into the book. And yet, the reader begins to get a picture of compromises made by both spouses to keep the peace, and, as Williams puts it, engage in “a reasonable trade-off for security and family.”
The pre-publication narrative about this book suggested that the husband suddenly and without warning just walked out, leaving Williams in a state of shock. The fact is that their marriage had in trouble for a while. They had been in couples counseling together when he finally decided to pull the plug and leave. Her intense negative reaction suggests that she didn’t see her role in the demise of the marriage, and she simply couldn’t image a life in which her husband failed to play his proper cookie-cutter role.
Williams makes some progress thanks to her experimentation, mainly through experiences in the natural world. Yet, she never quite gets to the point where she stops seeing herself as the (almost) blameless victim. In the final pages of the book, she makes sure that we know her ex has repeatedly apologized for the pain he caused her. I had to wonder if she ever apologized to him. I doubt it. For all these reasons, I’m not very sympathetic to Florence William, and I found disappointing her understanding of her heartbreak.
The value of this book for me was the scientific information presented, not her ruminations on her own life. Unfortunately, the publisher made a huge error in not providing an analytical subject index to help us find information about the scientific research of “heartbreak” and the scientists engaged in the research.
34 people found this helpful
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Annie
5.0 out of 5 stars Enormously Validating and Compelling
Reviewed in the United States on February 18, 2022
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When my husband left me after forty years of marriage for a much younger workplace colleague--he was her supervisor--I was physically devastated for months. I've been an athlete my whole life, I have given talks to audiences of a hundred, I travel regularly alone, but my entire body was filled with shaking and anxiety, things I had never before experienced. I felt as fragile as an eggshell, my ribs seemed to constrict my breathing, I felt constantly physically vulnerable, and any thought about money or my future filled me with terror, which I felt in my body more than my mind. I gradually found through trial and error many of the healing measures Florence Williamson found through her scientific research, but reading her book allowed me to understand more fully why I felt as I did and how I managed to heal, notably a trip that challenged me in many ways, forcing me to confront my fears, reconnect with my capabilities, courage, and curiosity, as did her river trip. I read a bunch of books about betrayal and divorce several years ago when all this happened to me, but none so thoroughly and intelligently addressed what I went through and what I needed to know. And Williams is a wonderful witty author who manages to write about real emotional (and physical) pain with depth and humor, able at avoiding any hint of whining or bitterness. (Some self-pity she allows herself, appropriately. I feel blessed that I found this book.
47 people found this helpful
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Top reviews from other countries

MargB
5.0 out of 5 stars Heartbreak
Reviewed in Australia on March 8, 2024
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Very informative and interesting
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