The following version of the book was used to create this study guide: hooks, bell. All About Love: New Visions. New York: William Morrow, 2018.

bell hooks experienced a lack of love in childhood and, as an adult, sees how our culture has turned away from love. This book is a call for a return to a love ethic. Love is not meaningless or irrelevant as the current cultural ethos suggests. The patriarchy has had a negative impact on our understanding of love, including our ability to define and express it. We need to question and reevaluate our understandings of love in order to return to it.

hooks defines love as "the will to nurture our own and another's spiritual growth" (36). It cannot exist where there is abuse or neglect and should not be confused with examples of care and affection. Childhood is where we first learn about love. It is essential that the rights of children be upheld so that they can understand love. hooks is against any type of injustice that negates the human rights of children, such as forms of punishment like spanking or pinching. Instead, parents need to learn to offer loving discipline. Children need guidance in the ways of love, and the adults in their lives must provide this guidance.

Truth-telling is essential in love, and lies erode trust. Lying is also often a way of asserting power and dominance or of manipulating; all of these actions make love impossible. Lying is often condoned in patriarchal structures and sexist socialization. People therefore need to question and break down these ingrained systems. Self-love is also important and begins with the fostering of strong self-esteem. For many people, developing self-love and self-esteem may mean working through childhood traumas and/or re-evaluating sexist socialization. Living purposely is an important road toward self-esteem. hooks then writes about how this purpose can be found and cultivated through the work one does. She encourages readers to give themselves the same love they would like to receive from others.

Spiritual awakening is essential in any culture that lacks love. hooks encourages readers to embrace spirituality in a way that honors inter-being and inter-connectedness. Spiritual practice can manifest itself either within or outside organized religion and can involve traditional ideas of spirituality such as prayer or other acts such as being of service to others. God is love and loving is itself a spiritual awakening. Awakening to love requires the abandonment of all systems of power and domination. hooks believes that, if we do so, a love ethic is possible in all our institutions. This means dismantling structures of white supremacy and patriarchy. One important contribution to this would be a shift in the types of images that permeate our mass media.

Materialism, capitalism, and narcissism are all rampant in our society and they are all detrimental to love. hooks writes about the rise of materialism and consumerism in America since the 1970s and challenges readers to question greedy impulses that feed materialism and prevent the distributions of resources to those who need them. Communities are essential to loving, and hooks encourages readers to look beyond the nuclear family for community. Being in a loving community requires compassion, forgiveness, generosity, and sacrifice. In addition to the importance of community, hooks notes that it is important for people to also feel comfortable in solitude; community should not be a solution to the fear of being alone.

hooks then writes about two important romantic relationships in her life as examples of how patriarchal thinking and sexist socialization are detrimental to one's capacity to love. Women in particular need to let go of patriarchal thinking in order to prioritize finding true love over finding a partner. Real love is not the end of all pain but requires that both parties be able to speak about, share, and see each other's pain and their own. Love is an action, not an uncontrollable emotion. Erotic connections can often be mistaken for love, and we should be wary of confusing passion with love. True love is not always romantic love and it can only come when we surrender our will to power.

Our culture has an obsession with death and violence but does not know how to deal with the fear of death or the pain of grieving effectively. hooks believes that we can find the courage to face death through loving. To avoid regret, we must be aware of the value of right livelihood and action. We need to live in the present and accept, with love, the reality that death is always with us. Love has the power to heal wounds, and many of us need to foster healthy family dynamics in order to do so. Love is not a solitary quest and should focus on community and interconnectedness rather than individualism and narcissism. The final chapter is about the importance of divine love and the role that angels can play in our lives, whether they be in human or in spiritual form. We need to face society's lovelessness as a wound that needs to be healed. hooks encourages readers to choose love no matter what.