B. Alexandra Szerlip, Contributor
Two-time National Endowment for the Arts fellow B. Alexandra Szerlip is the author of The Man Who Designed the Future: Norman Bel Geddes and the Invention of Twentieth Century America (Melville House, New York / London), voted “One of the Top Ten Arts Books of 2017” by the American Library Association. She’s also a painter and mixed-media sculptor.
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Shunga were highly erotic Japanese paintings and woodblock prints characterized by meticulously detailed genitalia, astonishing physical contortions, and occasional witty dialogue or commentary.
The aphorism-spouting Chinese detective played by a succession of white men in yellow-face continues to both delight and offend.
Theft, counterfeiting, kidnapping, poisoning – all manner of skullduggery is involved when it comes to one of the world’s most expensive foods.
Once derided as rotgut, tequila’s smoky, artisanal cousin is coming to a trendy bar near you.
More than just clowns, jesters played a unique and important role in the halls of power.
Beautiful, transient, and completely impractical, ice palaces are monuments to the human sense of novelty and wonder.
A journey through San Fran’s sordid past.
Traditionally associated with outlaws and gangsters, tattoos in Japan have a long and colorful history.
Kitsune are adept at shape-shifting from male to female, from animal to human, and back again.
