In 2014, 33-year-old Mandy Len Catron went on a date with an acquaintance.

They decided to try an experiment: inspired by a study designed to create romantic feelings, Mandy and Mark spent the evening asking each other 36 increasingly intimate questions, wondering if it would lead to them falling in love.

In How to Fall in Love with Anyone, this experiment is Catron’s starting point for investigating what it means to love someone and to be loved, and how we present our love to the world. What makes love last? Can love ever work the way it seems to in films, books and social media? Is there a “right” way to fall in love?

In these candid, charming and wise essays, Catron blends memoir with cultural and social commentary on the psychology, biology, history and literature of love. How to Fall in Love with Anyone is a deeply personal, yet universal investigation into the one thing we all want or think we want more than anything.

Includes “To Fall in Love with Anyone, Do This”, one of the most popular essays to appear in the New York Times’ “Modern Love” column

“In our age of total romantic confusion, Mandy Len Catron is a voice of good sense, warm humor, and consoling wisdom. Through the lens of her own relationships, she teaches us with a deft, convincing intelligence some of the vital moves in the art of love.” Alain de Botton, internationally bestselling author of How Proust Can Change Your Life and The Course of Love