People journey to Greece for the ruins, Turkey for the Aya Sophia, and Russia for St. Basil's, but Alexia Brue travels with a different itinerary: to visit the baths. At once deeply personal and highly informative, Cathedrals of the Flesh is the candid and playful account of one woman's determination to follow her passion. Alexia Brue has written for the New York Times Magazine, Vogue, and Spa Finder. She has a B.A. in Classics from Grinnell College. She lives in New York City. This is her first book. "Enchanting…Awash with insight into the human condition, Brue displays a knack for getting people, herself included, to 'come clean' in unexpected and entertaining ways." -Booklist "[Brue] has bred a new publishing hybrid, the beauty-travel memoir, Bruce Chatwin by way of Allure magazine." -New York Times Sunday Styles "[An] entertaining picaresque…[Brue's] devotion to the pleasures of bathing with strangers makes a seductive case for 'skinship,' in which, naked together in the same water, 'you do away with all the normal social barriers in life.'" -New Yorker