Good news, bad news

Great giant books of a gifty sort

The mission: To provide our readers with a high-quality overview of the season's very fine gift books. To search far and wide for the unusual, the extraordinary, the really big and fat and extravagant.
The good news: We found a lot.
The bad news: We're short on space.
Sooooooo, in the name of quick 'n' speedy shopping, here are 21 books which will certainly please someone on your list.

Sunflowers
Secrets of Monet's Garden
Harlem: The Vision of Morgan and Marvin Smith
The Photography Book
The Art Book
Photomosaics
Eyes of the Nation: A Visual History of the United States
The Merck Manual of Medical Information
The Dummies Series
The Architecture Pack
Seven Years of Highly Defective People
Mollie Katzen's Vegetable Heaven
Air and Space
The National Geographic Society: 100 Years of Adventure and Discovery
Your Baby and Child
The Wisdom of Harvey Penick
The Game I Love: Wisdom, Insight, and Instruction from Golf's Greatest Player
The New Decorating Book
The Forgetting Room
Dear Harp of My Country
A Calendar of Wisdom

For the gardener

Two beautiful new books will transport gardeners, artists, photographers and travelers out of their winter doldrums and into a spring reverie.

Exquisite is the only word to describe the first volume. "Sunflowers" is brimming with photos so vibrant they seem to leap from the page. This coffee-table portfolio shows sunflowers in all their color and beauty. From vast fields of brilliant yellow blooms to the striking silhouette of a single dried seedhead in the snow, this is the sunflower-lovers photo-book.



Derek Fell's "Secrets of Monet's Garden," is ideal for the traveler wishing to recall the country garden splendor of Monet's living canvas at Giverny. Artists will appreciate the juxtaposition between reproductions of Monet's garden paintings and recent photos of present-day plantings that inspired his creative genius. Gardeners will love this book. In it, they will find not only insight and ideas for bringing color and beauty to contemporary garden spaces, but also specific suggestions for incorporating Monet's style into home gardens. For those who have ever pondered the obvious similarities between artist and gardener, this book presents excellent visual examples. Noted garden writer/photographer Derek Fell specializes in recording the romantic qualities of the garden, and he has achieved his purpose in this, his latest book.

-- Pat Regel

For the art lover

Usually when people think of great Harlem photographers the first name that comes to mind is James VanDerZee, the ageless camera wizard who worked there for a great deal of this century. That will change with the publication of this excellent photo collection, "Harlem: The Vision of Morgan and Marvin Smith", culled from the noted collection of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture and the Smith family archive.

Setting up a small studio above the celebrated Apollo Theater, the Smith brothers, the twin sons of Kentucky sharecroppers, celebrated the community's vitality and many accomplishments. Their photographic magic, a masterful blend of shadow and light, sparkled mainly in their celebrity shots, figures like Lena Horne, Paul Robeson, Billie Holiday, W.E.B. DuBois, Josephine Baker and Adam Clayton Powell. Every page of this book delights the eye. Veteran photographer Gordon Parks wrote the informative foreword on the Smiths and the Harlem they loved. Nowhere will you find a more comprehensive pictorial record of the community's golden era than "Harlem: The Vision of Morgan and Marvin Smith."

-- Robert Fleming


 Appropriately titled, "The Photography Book" spans 150 years in pictures documenting both the historic and aesthetic accomplishments of the medium. Here for the first time is a wonderful reference work not only of the photographs that have shaped our times but of the photographers responsible for these evocative and inventive images.

This cleverly organized, easy-to-follow anthology follows an alphabetical path through photography's history, putting the photographers in the spotlight. Each artist is allotted one page for displaying a print. At the top of each page stands a short paragraph about both the photographer and the included work plus a cross reference to other photographers working in a similar style or at the same time who can also be found in the book. This ingenious format allows for surprising juxtapositions of artist and works, pairing Civil War daguerreotypes with glossy Fifth Avenue fashion advertisement shots. This book is a must for those passionate about photography's grand and diverse history as well as those interested in finding a collection of stirring photographs.

Along similar lines Phaidon has released a paperback version of the highly popular "Art Book." This pocket-sized version retains all of the timeless prints and artists of its hardcover, coffee-table cousin. It follows the same organizational mode of "The Photography Book" with a concise, informative section on each artist and his or her work. What is incredible about "The Art Book" is its awe-inspiring scope. From frescoes to Fauvism, this book has it all. This wee encyclopedia is perfect for your next galley crawl or European motorcycle tour.

-- Charles Wyrick

For the one who has everything

If you're looking for a book that is totally unlike any other volume on your Christmas list, you might try Robert Silvers' curious "Photomosaics." An oversized paperback, it consists of about 80 pages of illustrations composed of countless tiny photographs.

Silvers employs photographic pointillism. All paintings are composed of tiny amounts of color which, at a distance, merge into an illusion of three-dimensional representation. Silvers replaces those bits of color with appropriately colored and shaded photographs, so that when you're too close to see the larger image, you find instead countless small ones. In 1995, Silvers began writing software to enable a computer to compose new pictures from the images contained in photo archives. It's a fun idea, although perhaps not as earth-shaking as the self-congratulatory introduction claims.

The book comes with a magnifying glass, and it is possible to spend all too much time examining the images of the Mona Lisa and Madonna, La Grande Jatte and American Gothic. For example, amid the scenes of nature and the nighttime in the body of the owl, you can find a photo of Al Gore. Many photos reappear. The orangutan in the wing of the owl reappears in the face of Christ. The entire Mona Lisa appears as a blip of color in the larger Mona Lisa. But best of all, the role of Marilyn Monroe's beauty mark is played entirely by a picture of David Cassidy.

-- Michael Sims

For the armchair historian

As you browse this book's almost 500 pages of photographs, illustrations, maps, cartoons and posters -- not to mention detailed captions and historical essays -- you encounter a diverse sampling of the experience of being an American. Granted, any selection process represents the judgment and taste of the person doing the selecting, but "Eyes of the Nation: A Visual History of the United States" by Vincent Virga seems impressively comprehensive and inclusive.

By the time you close the book, you've encountered a tenderly framed photo of a young black soldier in the Union Army, a Chinese man selling a Chinese newspaper proclaiming the end of World War II, Howard Brodie's courtroom sketch of Bobby Seale bound and gagged during the Chicago Conspiracy trial, a photo of a Sioux encampment on the banks of a South Dakota river, Benjamin Franklin's original "Live Free or Die" cartoon, a still from "The Wizard of Oz."

Naturally, many of the finest photographers and illustrators are represented. And the text is insightful and witty, far more than mere captions. There have been other illustrated books about the U.S., but no other comes to mind that equals this one in quality and range.

-- Michael Sims

For the armchair hypochondriac

Probably I'll be dead by the time you read this. I've been prowling the new Home Edition of "The Merck Manual of Medical Information", and it's as thick with symptoms as its title is with M's. Although my mother never mentioned it, I'm pretty sure I have hereditary hyperlipidemias, and only moments ago I experienced what could only have been a transient ischemic attack. My acrocyanosis makes it difficult for me to be sure whether I have Raynaud's Disease or merely Raynaud's Phenomenon, but I don't really need either one, what with the anthrax.

How do we survive a day in the world? Why aren't we all, um, dead? With spiraling spirochetal things and pnumerous pneumococcal stuff, what's a body to do? This impressive, exhaustive and utterly appalling volume has sold more than ten million copies in 18 languages (I read the back) for a reason. It's an incredible book.

Finally all this information is available for people without doctorates. Only the staff of the Mayo Clinic could provide more information on more of the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to. From tennis elbow to varicose veins, from thyroiditis to bulbous pemphigoid, scoliosis, air travel, and venomous bites, the Merck fills more than 1500 pages with information about the human body. There's even a section titled "Objects in the Nose." No problem there, thanks.

-- Michael Sims

For the dummy

Face it, we're all dummies about something. So it's no crime to seek help from the quickly expanding Dummies series, published by IDG. You may think of the extremely successful computer book series when you think of Dummies ("PCs for Dummies," "Windows 95 for Dummies"), but it's time to think Dummies for just about any subject you can imagine: sex, opera, birdwatching, bartending, basketball . . .

These are not cookie-cutter books, despite the series' easily recognizable yellow-and-black covers. Each book is written by experts, and the tone is never condescending, nor the treatment of the subject matter simplistic. These folks are merely assuming you know nothing about throwing a cocktail party, for example, and you want to know how.

Surely you have at least one dummy on your shopping list.

-- Tom Hughes

For the budding Frank Lloyd Wright

It's brand new, it's up-to-the-minute accurate, it's interactive, it's better than a CD-ROM -- it's "The Architecture Pack" by Ron Van Der Meer and Deyan Sudjic. At more than 11" square and 2" deep, this shiny white cube looks like a game or a photo album, but it's a 3-D book, bulging with information about architecture and architects, stick-out constructions you put your hands around in order to understand and a cassette tape. You'll find yourself transfixed by the clear, deep voice of Sudjic, who will lead you through the seven sections of the book. Along the way, he'll explain a few of the pop-up buildings, instruct you to turn over flyleaf pages that reveal special features on innovative architects and their famous creations all over the world, and coach you into familiarity with the grandest of the visual arts -- architecture.

At $50, this compendium of information, activities, and scholarship, rolled into an innovative graphic design package, is quite a find.

-- Susan W. Knowles

For the encubicled

Some say that it's the shock of the familiar that gets us laughing. That would explain the wild popularity of Scott Adams' Dilbert. In "Seven Years of Highly Defective People," Adams takes us through the thought processes that created the characters in the strip that made him a bemused millionaire. The seven years Dilbert has been in existence have seen the cast of regulars grow and change, but throughout its focus has been basically the same -- the idiocy of everyday life, corporate and otherwise.

-- James Neal Webb

For the chef

As a lifelong vegetarian, I've had some experience with sans meat cookbooks. I've seen things done with tofu that should be illegal (i.e., Tofu Buche Noel). That is why I was thrilled to see a new cookbook from the beloved author of that bible of vegetarian cuisine "The Moosewood Cookbook." Leafing through beautiful page after page of Mollie Katzen's latest creation, I kept asking myself how this prolific author continues to discover such delicious and original ways to prepare food. "Mollie Katzen's Vegetable Heaven" possesses the charm and whimsy of the author's earlier books, but with this volume Katzen steps into the realm of new vegetarian cooking. Don't get me wrong, I'm a huge fan of Katzen's earlier books and have used them for years, but "Vegetable Heaven" is just more sophisticated, more exciting, and even more palatable to nonvegetarians. She also seems to have evolved not only as a chef, but as an artist as well. Her enchanting paintings, over 50 of them, appear throughout the book and are as delightful to the eyes as the recipes are to the taste buds.

The 200 plus recipes include Farfalle with Artichokes, Mustard Greens, and Slow-Cooked Onions, Blackberry Buckle with Warm Vanilla Lemon Sauce, or, for more adventurous types, Avocado Pear Sorbet. Also included are 26 mouthwatering menus from Katzen's public television cooking show.

As with all of Katzen's books, you have the sense when using "Vegetable Heaven" that you're cooking with a friend -- one whose love of good food is inspiring. This book lives up to its name. In a word, it's paradise.

-- Katherine Wyrick

For high flyers

Incredible as it may seem, in just five short years we'll be celebrating a century of powered flight. Air travel has gone through a lot of changes since that first, fleeting flight among the dunes at Kitty Hawk. Lindbergh soloed across the Atlantic in the Spirit of St. Louis less than 30 years later; men went to world war (twice) in biplanes and sleek fighters; Chuck Yeager broke the sound barrier in his Glamorous Glennis; and men have gone to the moon and returned. The thing of it is, all these wonderful machines are in one place: the National Air and Space Museum.

"Air and Space" recounts the story of man's quest to fly and the evolution of the flying machine. It explores the lives of those who changed the way we travel and who in turn were changed by flying. It takes us from the beginnings, to the present, and to an awe-inspiring future. Best of all, it gives us an up-close look at one of Washington's most popular attractions, the Air and Space Museum.

-- James Neal Webb

For adventurers

One hundred ten years ago, a group of men saw a world largely conquered, but still with adventures to be undertaken and discoveries to be made. So, in 1888 they formed the National Geographic Society to explore and to learn and to report back to us, to feed that sense of wonder that we all share. The medium that they chose to do so was the "National Geographic" magazine, and for all these years its dramatic photography and intelligent reporting has brought the world to our door.

"The National Geographic Society: 100 Years of Adventure and Discovery" takes us from the poles to the depths of the ocean, from our first attempts at powered flight to the blackness of space. Yet this is more than just a book of pretty pictures: it is the recounting of a publishing miracle and the story of exploration itself. As the evil archaeologist Belloq told Indiana Jones in "Raiders of the Lost Ark," "... we are just passing through history. This ... this is history."

-- James Neal Webb

For new moms and dads

In the pantheon of baby experts, none reigns so gently as Penelope Leach. She writes about raising children from the point of view of the child, which is a 180-degree switch from many parenting guides. Her classic "Your Baby and Child: From Birth to Age Five" has just been published in its third edition, and it makes a safe gift for new parents: no heavyhanded advice, good discussion of controversial topics, and chapter after chapter of reassuring information. The dozens of darling color photographs add a sweet touch. New parents love seeing babies, and there are tons of them here.

-- Helen Gilmore

For swingers

Swinging a golf club, like childbirth, is a subject about which there are dozens of books written, each promising an authoritative way to teach something that should come naturally. Many of these tomes break down the mechanics of golf into a grab-bag of mechanical tweakings until the motion, like the rest of life from which golf is to relieve us, is one more thing to be micro-managed.

What a joy it is, then, to find that two masters like Harvey Penick and Sam Snead make reading about golf seem like advice from an old uncle rather than a humiliating session in front of a drill sergeant. Penick and Snead make you want to play the game. "When I ask you to take an aspirin," Penick writes in his "Little Red Book," "please don't take the whole bottle." "The Wisdom of Harvey Penick: Lessons and Thoughts from the Collected Writings of Golf's Best-Loved Teacher", written with Bud Shrake, gathers the best from four books, including "The Game for a Lifetime," which he was working on in 1995 when he fell ill with pneumonia. Happily, Penick's advice always comes off with a tone of gentle suggestion and is therefore accessible to novice players as well.

Sam Snead's "The Game I Love: Wisdom, Insight, and Instruction from Golf's Greatest Player", written with Fran Pirozzolo, has the same anecdotal tone but contains more reminiscences from the early days of the PGA tour. Snead, along with Ben Hogan and Byron Nelson, perhaps did more to make golf popular in the 1940s and 1950s.

His reminiscences of Hogan, Nelson and other pros are a vital link to golf's past. Fans of sports history will enjoy Snead's reminiscences of the days when even the most successful pro golfers were making well under six figures. Younger fans will also enjoy Snead's take on the ascendance of Jack Nicklaus, Arnold Palmer and Gary Player.

Now 85, Snead still hits 200 golf balls, does 200 situps and forearm and wrist exercises every day. As one of the sports world's grand old men, Snead is a treasure.

-- Shelton Clark

For the designing woman

Each year brings a new crop of decorating wish books, some make-you-feel-bad lavish, some so downmarket that you begin saving paper towel tubes in hopes of building that coffee table they describe.

Better Homes and Gardens falls safely between extremes, and it's the sheer comfort of their style that makes their magazine, and their many books, so inviting. A big new idea book is just out: "The New Decorating Book," which updates a previous multimillion-copy-selling edition.

The book's two parts mirror the way most people approach home decorating. Part I provides ideas room by room, including home offices, kids' rooms, and bathrooms. Part II provides help with specific problems: picking fabrics, creating window coverings, arranging furniture. The overall look here is definitely eclectic: a little country, a little French, and a lot of comfort -- and it's all captured in inspiring full-color photographs.

-- Rosemary See

For fans of a good mystery

Nick Bantock is back. The author of those unlikely bestsellers, the Griffin and Sabine trilogy, as well as "The Venetian's Wife" and "The Egyptian Jukebox," has done it again. His new book, labeled "a fiction," is "The Forgetting Room." It is as handsome and unpredictable a creation as its predecessors.

From its marbled endpapers to its cut-out jacket (which peeks at the handsome cover underneath), to the color collages and fold-out inserts, the book pleases as artifact before you even read it as a story. But of course the story itself is the point, and Bantock fans will not be disappointed.

The narrator, the gloomy but aptly named Armon Hurt, inherits the family manse in Spain when his grandfather dies. The title of the novella comes from the grandfather's name for his studio in Switzerland. "Remember, Armon," he once told his grandson, "here in the Forgetting Room, the past is present." Armon's inheritance comes with something of a metaphysical puzzle from his quirky ancestor. Its solution forms the framework of the fable of renewal and communication across time and death that fills the book's 105 pages.

-- Michael Sims

For the music lover

Irish tenor James W. Flannery plays a double role, both writing the text and demonstrating his powerful voice, on a beautiful new book-and-CD combo, "Dear Harp of My Country: The Irish Melodies of Thomas Moore." The handsome paperback, illustrated in color, contains two CDs in pockets inside the covers. In 39 tracks, Flannery brings to life both famous and lesser known Irish songs, from the mournful ballad " 'Tis the Last Rose of Summer" to rousing anthems of identity in (and exile from) a troubled land.

Flannery is no slouch as a writer, either. His book is stuffed with entertaining anecdotes and useful background information, and assumes no previous knowledge of Irish history or music.

--Michael Sims

Finally, inspiration from Leo Tolstoy

Toward the end of his life, Leo Tolstoy completed what he considered his most important project, "collecting the wisdom of the centuries in one book." Surprisingly, this gathering of quotations has never been published in English until now, and what a welcome volume it is. "A Calendar of Wisdom: Daily Thoughts to Nourish the Soul" is designed to be read daily, with five or six quotations a day from all sorts of sources: the Bible, ancient philosophers and theologians, and surprising writers as well. Such gentle stuff, this, an oasis from the thrashing about that comes with the holidays. For December 25, Tolstoy writes: "Virtue and charity start at home. If you have to go somewhere to display it, then it is not virtue."

-- Phoebe Cramer

©1997, ProMotion, inc.

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