Love At Goon Park: Harry Harlow and the Science of Affection

We take it for granted today that babies need love. But less than a century ago, psychologists warned women against showing their children "too much affection"-predicting dire consequences ranging from deadly disease to sexual dysfunction in adulthood. The story of how this conventional wisdom was finally shattered takes us into the life and the laboratory of Harry Harlow-workaholic, alcoholic, brilliant and brave, capable of caustic wit and cruelty-and into an era in which the scientific establishment was just beginning to understand the power of human emotion.

Author Biography: Deborah Blum won a Pulitzer Prize in 1992 for her writing and reporting about primate experiments and ethics, a subject that she further explored in her first book, The Monkey Wars. Her second book, Sex on the Brain, was a New York Times Notable Book for 1997. Blum is a professor of journalism at the University of Wisconsin, and president-elect of the National Association of Science Writers.