Books: Why Do I Love These People? Honest and Amazing Stories of Real Families

Because Po Bronson takes the dysfunction out of "dysfunctional family". If you've ever felt like you were alone in all of the challenges of being a member of a family, think again. This book is a brilliant demonstration that every family has its issues. You are not alone!

And -

As much as they are a source of joy and love, our families can also be a source of great pain and disappoint. Fortunately, we grow and learn as much (if not more) from pain and disappointment than we do from joy and love.

Click here to purchase this book.

Amazon.com:

The 19 families profiled in this absorbing book face a familiar litany of domestic dysfunction: infidelities, substance abuse, teen pregnancy, messy divorces and the intergenerational estrangement of immigrants. Novelist and social documentarian Bronson (What Should I Do with My Life?) finds the solutions to their dilemmas in the good old-fashioned elements of character and action, as people take stock of themselves and their motivations and painstakingly piece together their relationships and lives. Bronson's is an unromantic view of family life; its foundations, he believes, are not soul-mate bonding or dramatic emotional catharses, but steady habits of hard work and compromise, realistic expectations and the occasional willingness to sever a relationship that's beyond repair. But he also has an optimistic view of today's crazy-quilt of blended and unconventional families, reassuring commitment-shy young adults that "the golden era of family is not in our past, it's in our future." Bronson occasionally lapses into shallow pop psychology, as when he chalks up one husband's philandering to the oxytocin "high" caused by sex with someone new. But usually he offers a probing, clear-eyed, hopeful narrative of familial problems that many readers will recognize.

Click here to purchase this book.