This book is chock-full of strange and interesting tidbits about all kinds of unexpected people throughout history. It naturally focuses on different aspects of their love affairs and love lives, but with the impressive goal of trying to tie these anecdotes and accounts into the overall body of knowledge we have about these people. As the book states, intimacy is an important part of life, and so if you want to really know about how a person was, what was important to them, and how they dealt with things, their approach towards love shouldn't be neglected wholesale in a thorough discussion of their lives. That said, who knows how much of this information is apocryphal, as can happen all too easily with biographical accounts. I would view this book as a good way to get a feel for what was said and thought about famous figures throughout history, during their lifetimes.