"Kaufmann is a wise and clever microsociologist, inspired by Erving Goffman, by fashion magazines, and by kittenish and cougarish women. He is the voice of the annoyed, the vexed, the fearful, and the comforted." Contemporary Sociology "Living in an increasingly detraditionalised world opens up glorious new opportunities for individual autonomy and self-realisation. It also creates unprecedented pressures on long-term relationships. Kaufmann brilliantly captures this paradox of life in late modernity, analysing the seemingly limitless sources of mutual irritation in everyday life, as well as spouses' inventive revenge and peacemaking tactics." Véronique Mottier, Jesus College, Cambridge & University of Lausanne "Jean-Claude Kaufman's Gripes is one of those rare books that brings into focus a seemingly unimportant fact of life. Irritation and the slow abrasive effect of the gripes it causes are sands that grind down the gears of relationships. Behavioral scientists and self-help advisers make so much of the powerful passions. Kaufman brilliantly illuminates the simpler forces of social disruption." Charles C. Lemert, author of Muhammad Ali: Trickster in the Culture of Irony