Fassett's embroidered flower gardens, frog cushions, trompe l'oeil flower plates, and postage-stamp lampshades teeter spectacularly on the knife's edge separating genius from schizophrenia; his text, meanwhile, really makes the reader think - in a way few other books have ever done - about the emotional power of the richly patterned traditions of eastern Europe and the Indian subcontinent. Fassett contends that Western interiors - the best of them evoking "a sterile beigeness ... that chilled me to the core" - have lost all sense of humor. And he knows just what we need to get it back.