Books

The roots of our modern dating crisis run far deeper than iPhones, hookups, and dating apps. Young women have been encouraged to see themselves as broadly superior to their male peers, argues bestselling author Abigail Shrier. Gen Z women approach dating like a hiring decision, rejecting men who fail to meet shallow, arbitrary, and ever-changing standards. The result is an epidemic of loneliness that makes everyone miserable.

In The Plot Against Love, Shrier exposes the web of politicians, tech corporations, educators, and philanthropists who conspired to kill romance for good. Drawing on over one hundred private interviews with young singles and new research on mating and attraction, Shrier argues that female desire has been frustrated by ambient messaging that denigrates men. She uncovers the school policies that pathologize masculinity and the social pressure to treat ordinary male characteristics as contemptible. And she meets the young men who have turned to porn and the bitterest voices in the manosphere to cope with the absence of love they still hope to find.

None of this was inevitable—and we don’t need to accept it. With her characteristic fearlessness and humor, Shrier provides a playbook for rejecting the toxic ideas that keep young people apart and reembarking on life’s greatest adventure: falling in love.