A Library of Christmas Gifts

A celebration of history, life and art

OVER $40

Early Homo sapiens decorated the walls of his caves with simple yet evocative drawings of the animals he hunted; later artists, from Leonardo and Albrecht Duerer through John James Audubon, captured not merely the physical appearance but the very essence of the creatures that interested them. The work of all these artists is handsomely presented in S. Peter Dance's The Art of Natural History (Overlook Press; unpaginated; $49.50), a handsome, oversized volume that does as much justice to painters and sculptors as it does to their subjects. Naturalists who can afford it will find this book an invaluable reference. Others may want to take a scissors to it; many of the pictures are so lively that they fairly roar to be released from the pages and freed to hang on walls.

Not for everyman's coffee table is The Herons of the World by James Hancock and Hugh Elliott (Harper & Row; 304 pages; $65). The authors have limited their choice of long-legged wading birds to a single family, the Ardeidae, which comprises some 61 species. The Snowy Egret graces the dust jacket, wearing the plumes, or aigrettes, that caused a heedless millinery trade to slaughter it to the brink of extinction in the early 1900s. But, as Emily Dickinson pointed out, hope is a thing with feathers, and today the protected Snowy has become a common sight--as well as a hopeful symbol of conservation in general.

The Snowy's big brother, the Great Egret, has benefited from conservation, as have other herons in North America, including the Black-crowned Night Heron ("quawk" to baymen), and the Green Heron. The picture in the Old World is not so pretty. World-ranging field birders and semiprofessional ornithologists will gladly find space on a tall shelf for this somewhat technical work, richly illustrated by Painters Robert Gillmor and Peter Hayman.

Once aptly described as "art to walk on," Oriental (or as some prefer, Islamic) rugs and carpets are enjoying a resurgence of popularity in the West. Indeed, the finer examples from Iran, Turkey and the Caucasus have become too valuable to walk on. The prices for some exceptional antique rugs have risen as much as 1000% during the past seven years, especially at auctions where oil-rich Middle Easterners are eagerly buying back the treasures of their heritage. The Splendor of Persian Carpets by E. Gans-Ruedin (Rizzoli; 566 pages; $85) shows off some spectacular examples whose color values are faithfully reproduced in more than 100 full-page illustrations. The most magnificent carpets are from the 16th century and, not surprisingly, can be found in Tehran's Carpet Museum. The text is in English and Farsi, the language of Iran, but words can not compete with the passions evoked by the illustrations.

Those who have braved long lines for a museum glimpse of "The Treasures of Tutankhamen" have not seen everything yet. The Gold of Tutankhamen by Kamol El Mallakh and Arnold C. Brackman (Newsweek Books; 332 pages; $49.95) offers color pictures of the 55 objects now touring the U.S. in the Tut exhibition, plus reproductions of nearly 150 more that are too large or fragile to be moved from their home in Cairo. Historian Brackman has written a sound, engrossing account of the discovery of Tutankhamen's tomb in 1922 and of the travails that preceded and followed it. But the pictures are far more compelling in their fidelity to precious stones and metals and even more precious artistry. The discovery of this breathtaking treasure was astounding enough; even more amazing is the fact that it was ever buried.

The symbolists, who were a dominant force in European art from about 1870 to 1900, were less a movement than an atmosphere of thought. Symbolists and Symbolism by Robert L. Delevoy (Skira/ Rizzoli; 247 pages; $60), a beautifully arranged and illustrated book, is redolent of that hothouse atmosphere, with its enigmatic dreams, mythical allusions and sexual ecstasy. Here are the otherworldly faces of the Pre-Raphaelites, the terrifying sirens of Edvard Munch, the eerily sensual women of Gustav Klimt. The well-written text, which relates the art to thinkers as disparate as Wagner and Freud, is set off by the sensuous verse of such poets as Rossetti and Rimbaud.

The short span from the death of Vincent Van Gogh in 1890 to the end of World War I in 1918 witnessed the birth and adolescence of modern art. which violently shattered a four-century-old pictorial tradition. As Matisse, Picasso, Leger and the other alchemists found new talismans and techniques, the human body, as well as landscapes, was fragmented like pieces of a broken mirror, and the orchestration of color and geometry assumed new proportions. But if the modems were united in rebellion, they soon splintered into their own movements: the symbolists, for example, conjured up their own demons of psychology with vacant-eyed sibyls and apocalyptic horsemen, while the futurists depicted a brave new world of machines and mannequins bereft of humanity. Modern Art 1890-1918 by Jean Clay (Vendome; 320 pages; $45) celebrates the visions and revisions of this remarkable period with 347 color plates and an expert text that defines a new order of creation.

$24.95 to $40

High-Tech by Joan Kron and Suzanne Slesin; designed by Walter Bernard (Potter; 286 pages; $25). The young marrieds who throw a plank across some bricks and call it a bookshelf, the SoHo loftnik who hangs his jeans in an abandoned factory locker, or the beach-house owner who uses a washed-up hatch cover as a coffee table may not know it, but they are part of a furnishing trend now touted as "high-tech: the industrial style." In this handsomely designed volume, the authors show how the drab utilitarian can be transformed into blue-collar chic. The objets range from 950 lunch-counter salt shakers to $1,285 professional refrigerators. As in all new styles, it is up to the individual designer or architect to weed the authentically innovative from the conversation pieces, like blue obstruction lights on stanchion pipes, which are said to simulate an airport runway in trend setters' bedrooms.

Great Stud-Farms of the World by Monique and Hans D. Dossenbach, Hans Joachim Koehler (Morrow; 289 pages; $35). The authors have composed an encyclopedic and lushly illustrated celebration of horses and the places where they are bred. Surely the animal has not received such intelligently loving attention since Siegfried Sassoon published his Memoirs of a Fox-Hunting Man in 1928. After tracing the history of horse breeding to the time when the animals first entered the service of man some 5,000 or 6,000 years ago, probably in the steppes north of the Caucasus, the authors proceed upon a world tour of stud-farms on five continents. They repeat much delightful lore, including stories of Colonel William Hall Walker, who matched mares and stallions according to their zodiac signs and had a horoscope cast for every foal.

Savage Paradise by Hugo van Lawick (Morrow; 272 pages; $29.95) is a predator's portrait gallery, set on the golden plains of Tanzania's Serengeti. Having spent some 16 years observing and photographing wild animals in Africa, Van Lawick has a scientist's understanding of beastly behavior and a raconteur's way with anecdotes. But his long suit is photography: studies of sociable lions coping with the problems of love life and day care, graceful leopards stalking their prey, packs of hyenas engaging in gang warfare, and endearing cheetah families at play--all unique glimpses of the harsh beauty of a wild and fragile paradise.

The Dance, Art and Ritual of Africa by Michel Huet. Text by Jean-Louis Paudrat. (Pantheon; 241 pages; $35). The dancing black African in mask and full feather has become an anthropological cliche, reproduced tirelessly in lavish gift books. French Photographer Michel Huet triumphantly reclaims the subject in these 261 photographs taken during the past 30 years. Focusing on the tribes of the vast sub-Sahara, Muet has assembled a vivid and invaluable record of African costumes, rituals and artistic traditions that are fading before the winds and transistors of change. In the Gallic manner, both text and pictures are presented in a systematic and scholarly way.

Sports! Photographs by Neil Leifer; text by George Plimpton; foreword by Red Smith (Abrams; 192 pages; $29.95). As a top photographer for SPORTS ILLUSTRATED, Neil Leifer sat in the catbird seat through nearly two decades of Olympic Games, World Series, Kentucky Derbys, heavyweight championship fights. So there is much in this huge, flawlessly reproduced collection that is born of the right time and the right place. But Leifer also sat on teetering ladders, leaned out of helicopters, strapped himself or his cameras along rails on the homestretch, or under ski jumps. Searching for the special angle, he found a special vision. These are photographs of insight as well as drama, and, unlike most sports photography, more rewarding for what they reveal about the players than the games.

Of all the nature artists working today, no one else has Glen Loates' eye for detail, his sense of place and his ability to capture every hair, quill and feather with pencil or brush. Admirers, and the uninitiated, can sate themselves by exploring this brilliant full-length collection. The Art of Glen Loates by Paul Duval (Cerebrus/Prentice-Hall; unpaginated; $35) traces the evolution of the artist's unique style and may inspire some readers to emulate his practice of stalking the wilds to get close to his subjects. But not too close. One of Loates' grizzly bears is lifelike enough on the printed page; after seeing it, few would need to get any nearer.

The Audubon Society Book of Wildflowers by Les Line and W.H. Hodge (Abrams; 260 pages; $37.50). Audubon Magazine Editor Line has made an art form of nature photography in color. With Walter Henricks Hodge he has produced pages of California poppies (Eschscholtzia) that seem to burst into orange flame. Line has selected 181 photos (modestly including only two of his own but eleven of Hodge's), showing in many-hued detail the strange life of epiphytes like those that amazed Columbus, and the infinitely varied floral array to be found in jungles, pampas, steppes and deserts. Hodge's text, despite a deplorable text layout, is as clear as it is authoritative. And the work of the 68 superb photographers who contributed to the collection has no equal on any bookshelf anywhere.

Great Photographic Essays from LIFE, commentary by Maitland Edey (New York Graphic Society; 278 pages; $24.95). From its first issue to its last, the old weekly LIFE (1936-1972) published some 2,000 photo essays. These were as original in concept as the magazine itself: skillfully composed picture stories that explored the lives of private people, their tribulations and triumphs, jinks high and low, the places they inhabited or returned to or recalled. This collection, elegantly introduced and annotated by Maitland Edey, a former assistant managing editor of LIFE, includes such classics as W. Eugene Smith's Spanish Village, Howard Sochurek's The Prairie and Dorothea Lange's Irish Country People, as well as many less remembered but equally riveting studies, complemented by Edey's inside story of the ways they were put together. Seldom can one say that a 278-page book should have been twice as long.

David Levine is the best-known political and literary caricaturist since Max Beerbohm. His cartoon of Lyndon Johnson's gall bladder scar in the shape of Viet Nam is a classic, and it is impossible to see a picture of Kafka, Mailer or Proust without remembering the artist's caustic lines. But there is another, gentler Levine: a water-colorist of enormous delicacy and control. The Arts of David Levine (Knopf; 205 pages; $25) celebrates both with generous samples of serious portraiture, beach scenes and parodic sketches that recall the nervous poignance of Daumier and fully justify John Updike's appraisal of the artist as "one of America's assets."

UNDER $20

When Charles Darwin stepped off the Beagle and landed in the Galapagos in 1835, he found a world in which time had stood still. As Roger Lewin, an editor of Britain's New Scientist, reveals in Darwin's Forgotten World (Reed; $19.95), the clock is still stopped. Iguanas and other lizards, close relatives of the dinosaurs that have been extinct for millenniums, prowl the islands. Giant tortoises, resembling prehistoric tanks, lurch slowly along their beaches. Lewin, aided by Photographer Sally Anne Thompson, does his usual excellent job of showing what Darwin saw when he landed in this natural laboratory of evolution. And not a moment too soon. The Ecuadorian government, which owns these islands, is fortunately taking steps to discourage tourism. Unless it does, the clock could start running, and though Darwin's world will never be forgotten, a large part of it could be destroyed.

Pop heroines came late to the pages of the comics. Once there, they traced a colorful road, from Mamma of The Katzenjammer Kids, which debuted in 1897, to the flappers of the '20s and spunky private detectives, aviatrixes and reporters of the '30s who prefigured Superheroines Wonder Woman, Supergirl and, later, Doonesbury's Joanie Caucus. Women in the Comics (Chelsea House; 229 pages; $15) follows them all and includes parallel histories of women in the real world. Author Maurice Horn is a bit too inclusive: Playboy's Little Annie Fanny and bizarre S-M panels from Europe earn this great compendium an R rating.

Dance photographs freeze in two dimensions the movement that flows in three. Much is lost in the process, and no amount of trickery can make up for it. In Dancers Dancing (Abrams; unpaginated; $9.95), Photographer Herbert Migdoll makes some inventive attempts at simulating the spectacle of live performances through the use of montage, solarization and time lapse. The resulting pictures are never less than colorful, but they seem to compete with their human subjects rather than record them. Yet photography in the right hands can bring something to dance as well, and Migdoll is at his best when he gives the eye permanent images that would otherwise have disappeared in a blur. Two photographs of Mikhail Baryshnikov, all intense concentration and soaring energy, are themselves classics and more than worth the reasonable price of this book.

Every dog has his day, and with the publication of The Literary Dog by William E. Maloney and J.C. Suares (Putnam; 126 pages; $14.95 hardcover, $7.95 paper), he also has his book. Decorated with works by Hogarth, Toulouse-Lautrec, Velazquez and other masters, this anthology bristles with canine tales, poems and anecdotes. With more than 100 selections from the likes of Shakespeare, Chekhov, Twain and Thurber, the result is more than mere doggerel. There are, for instance, Odysseus' faithful Argus, who waits 20 years for his master's return, Goldsmith's poor mongrel who dies of biting a man, and Lewis Carroll's Monarch of Dogland, who discourses in Doggee. A must for all those seeking a new leash on life.

Woodblock prints have become synonymous with Japanese art. Later Japanese Prints by Richard Illing (Phaidon; 64 pages; $9.95), an anthology of 65 examples (33 in color), surveys the vital 19th century tradition in which the print was produced and sold as a popular, commercial art form. Broadsheets celebrating the Kiabuki theater, courtesans, sumo wrestlers, samurai heroes, and witches and demons from Japanese folklore sold like rice cakes in the capital of Edo, now Tokyo. Yet despite their wide appeal, these prints were the work of master craftsmen who painstakingly carved up to a dozen separate blocks to produce one multicolored picture. An inexpensive introduction to the lively imagination and skill of vanished artisans.

Many picture books are so big and glossy that they seem designed for an audience rather than a single viewer. Signs of Life, photographs by Olivia Parker (Godine; unpaginated; $15) is a welcome exception. Parker works on a small scale (none of her pictures exceeds 35 sq. in.) that invites close scrutiny and then rewards it. Her subjects are found objects, old photographs, tombstones, pages from books, articles of clothing, sometimes arranged in odd patterns, always rendered in silvery light that makes the old seem new. A favorite pattern is the juxtaposition of fruits or vegetables and constricting frames. Though such shots sometimes attract cute titles (Bosc in a Box), they tease the eye with tensions that seem the opposite of still life.

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