Carved by an obscure Greek sculptor, Alexandros of Antioch, in the first first century BCE, and inspired by the Greek myth of the Judgment of Paris, the Venus was discovered serendipitously in 1820 by the French ensign Olivier Voutier and a local farmer, Yorgos Kentrotas, on the Cycladic Island of Melos. Her celebrated arrival in Paris a year later helped transform the Louvre into the most famous museum in the world.

Phil Cousineau's long-awaited book is a mosaic of meditations on the marvelous attributes of Venus, such as beauty, love, desire, pleasure, and happiness, as well as her shadowy connections with envy, war and violence. Cousineau's work is a curiosity cabinet chockfull of art history, mythology, archaeology, poetry-and tales from the author's years of travels around Greece. This is a polyfabulous, many-storied, book that reveals the secret strength of sublime art as a means of further experiencing beauty beyond museums and in our everyday lives.