sensitivity in that particular area
It happens. Nature is cruel. You probably have had sexy dreams, you just don't remember them. Certainly these textual blemishes are partially redeemed by the book's plentiful, often unexpected illustrations (though some are printed so darkly that details mentioned in the text cannot be verified). For instance, Bartholmaeus Spranger's innocent sounding "Triumph of Wisdom" actually a portrait of a helmeted beauty, with bare breasts and provocative wisps of armor looks rather like the cover for a sword and sorcery paperback: She Ra or Red Sonya, as painted by a 16th century Boris Vallejo. The silver plaquette of Paulus van Vianen's "Mercury and Argus" reveals a beautiful reclining youth, languorously nude, an epicene's dream. My journey was a variation, picking up the train that runs from Beijing through the Gobi Desert, Mongolia and Siberia before heading for Moscow via a string of vibrant Russian cities that are booming in the post Soviet years.