New picture books bring the world into focus
REVIEWS BY DEANNA LARSON
Pretty coffee table books are a staple of the holiday season. But some books not only look good, they make readers reconsider, think, smile and imagine. We've chosen some highlights from the recent crop of gift books.
Bella Tuscany
Ever since she decided to buy the rundown farmhouse Bramasole and document her adventures in Under the Tuscan Sun,
Frances Mayes has turned a twist of fate into a one-woman promotional machine for la dolce vita. Her latest book, Bringing Tuscany Home: Sensuous Style From the Heart of Italy, is another astutely observed memoir about life alla Italiana. Writing with her husband Edward, this time Mayes explores historic renovation (the couple has now tackled abandoned Tuscan farmhouse number two), decorating, gardening, cooking and any other home-related subject her magpie mind alights on. The book is also a scrapbook of their life in Italy—they now split their time between Bramasole and the Bay Area—complete with evocative pictures of dining al fresco with Italian friends, scrumptious sounding recipes and a section on Tuscan wines and stories about growing olives and bottling estate olive oil. Bringing Tuscany Home also includes poetic descriptions and photos of crumbling Tuscan houses and collaborations with local muralists, furniture makers, architects, basket weavers and stonemasons. Thanks to her experiences, Mayes has now been contracted to design furniture and home accessories on the Tuscan theme for some American companies. While the Tuscan sun would keep shining without Frances Mayes, her enthusiastic embrace of all things Italian is a perfect match for the passions of her adopted neighbors, "who inspire the world with their knowledge of how to live like the gods."
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Tribal counsel
The "Native universe" could describe the whole of the Americas and Caribbean, as well as the varied, mysterious and complex societies of Native peoples.
Native Universe: Voices of Indian America is the inaugural book of the new National Museum of the American Indian at the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C. The book provides a fascinating overview of Native American history and traditions and presents perspectives on the role of Native people in current society by Indian tribal leaders, writers, scholars, poets and storytellers. Native Universe is packed with stunning pictures of ancient clothing, tools and artifacts that accompany numerous essays on rituals, beliefs, cultural milestones and how they all connect to modern Native American life. Among the subjects covered are: the "accidental" gift of horses descended from mounts of Spanish colonial soldiers, which became a "profound agent of change" for Native peoples; "This Land Belongs to Us," the brief and heartbreaking statement of Lakota chief Sitting Bull in 1882 before the Battle of the Little Big Horn; documents and pictures from a revisit of Wounded Knee during the 1970s Indian movement; a discussion of the war bonnet, a symbol appropriated by American popular culture; and the ancient warrior culture exemplified in modern times by Hopi tribal member Lori Ann Piestewa, who lost her life in the Iraq War.
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A wonderful LIFE
Many of the images from the pages of LIFE magazine are iconic: the sailor kissing the nurse in Times Square on V-J Day by Alfred Eisenstaedt, the aerial shot of a near drowning on Coney Island by Margaret Bourke-White, Gordon Parks' "American Gothic" portrait of cleaner Ella Watson, Larry Burrow's photo of a GI shot dead onboard the Yankee Papa 13 in Vietnam, Phillipe Halsman's swirling composite of artist Salvador Dali in "Dali Atomicus" and Milton Greene's photo of Marilyn Monroe.
The Great LIFE Photographers features pictures by more than 200 of the century's best photojournalists on staff at the magazine throughout its history. But lesser-known works still retain enormous storytelling power decades later, attesting to the skill and artistry of photographers who placed themselves mere feet from the action to frame the shot. George Strock was following troops in New Guinea when he discovered the bodies of three U.S. soldiers half-buried in the sand of Buna Beach in 1943. Carl Mydans caught the faces of terrified young children huddled in the snow hiding from a Russian air raid in 1940s Finland, and George Roger snapped a young German boy walking past hundreds of Bergen-Belsen concentration camp corpses in 1945. Some works—such as Lennart Nilsson's microphotography of the moment of conception; William Vandivert's photo of young Welsh girl badly injured in the Blitz; W. Eugene Smith's picture of a mother bathing her deformed daughter, a victim of mercury poisoning, in Japan in 1971; and Michael Rougier's portrait of a Korean boy found orphaned by his mother's dead body—made the world wonder and inspired change. And some, like the picture of Joseph Goebbels' cold, hard stare taken by Alfred Eisenstaedt in 1933, prove that immutable truths can be caught forever by a lens in a box.
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Family reunion
Sisters: Tenth Anniversary Edition revisits 13 sets of sisters originally featured in Sisters,
the sleeper New York Times bestseller of the early 1990s, along with some new siblings. Surprising,
difficult and touching sentiments are revealed in Sharon J. Wohlmuth's updated photos and Carol Saline's interviews: aging, illness, disillusionment and death have caught up with some of the women, while affection and deep emotional bonds are more pervasive than ever. Famous sister reunions include the stunning trio of supermodel Christy Turlington, now a mother, and sisters Erin and Kelly; Coretta Scott King and Edythe Scott; musical sisters Irline, Louise and Barbara Mandrell; and Clare, Jeanne and Chris Evert. But some of the most moving reunions include the Green sisters, now in their 90s and separated for the first time in their lives; Janice Coffey, whose brother is now her sister, Elizabeth; and Julie Johnson, who happily gave birth to a baby boy, now 10 years old, for her sister Janet.
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Deanna Larson is a writer in Nashville.
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