it grounds them fully in the complexities of a historical period that has many more interesting ideas about marriage and relationships than are often portrayed in books that take it for granted that literally everyone in the nineteenth century subscribed to exactly the same newsletters and had exactly the same hangups

YES I loved that! As soon as the book mentioned Oneida I was like omgggggg this is gonna be GREAT. There were legitimately people experimenting with lots of types of relationships other than heterosexual monogamous marriages at that time and it was lovely to see a book lay that out clearly.