Gift Books

Some day publishers will produce the ultimate Christmas book: an immense 6-ft. by 3-ft. volume upon which the purchaser can rest coffee tables. This year gift books reflect the bullish retail trend; add four legs and many would do for living room furniture. High prices, as always, are the greetings of the season. The 1975 record holder is The New York Graphic Society's luxuriant art book Gustav Klimt for $175. But scattered throughout the stores is a variety of handsome volumes for nearly every wallet and interest.

$45 AND UP

EGON SCHIELE'S PORTRAITS by Alessandra Comini. 556 pages. University of California. $65. THE ART OF EGON SCHIELE. Text by Envin Mitsch. 267 pages. Phaidon/Praeger. $45. Complementary books, both of them superb, about the prolific Austrian expressionist who died, aged 28, in 1918. In her discussion of the emotionally charged portraits, Comini vividly describes the intellectual ferment in turn-of-the-century Vienna. Mitsch concentrates on the art itself--anguished self-portraits, brooding studies, quasi-erotic studies. Handsome reproductions show the risk in trying to depict feelings at the end of the nerve: Schiele sometimes succeeds in limning only his neuroses.

ETERNAL AMERICA by Yoshikazu Shirakawa. 231 pages. Kodansha International. $60. Japanese Photographer Shirakawa is justly celebrated for his photography of mountains, especially for last year's monumental Himalayas. Here he turns his cameras on an entire continent. Some of the color work is in comparable: a dramatically textured shot of Death Valley dunes; the hot springs at Minerva Terrace in Yellowstone, which seem to rise from the surface of Jupiter. The black-and-whites, all infra-red shots, are disappointingly abstract. Shirakawa tries to compensate with a breezy, crotchety text that notes, among other things, that hippies spread lice.

ANGKOR by Bela Kalman. Text by Joan Lebold Cohen. 240 pages. Abrams. $45. Just before the Indochinese war engulfed Cambodia, Photographer Bela Kalman set down a color record of these sacred sandstone cities. Kalman's striking photographs (accompanied by a lucid text) record it all: brooding jungle setting, massive stone faces, tree-tangled mystery of unrestored Ta Prohm, eye-stretching vistas of Angkor Wat itself. Look hard: the temples were damaged in the Cambodian war, and they will never be the same.

THE MYTHIC IMAGE by Joseph Campbell. 552 pages. Princeton University Press. $45. The poet W.B. Yeats saw in dreams the beginnings of responsibilities. The noted scholar Joseph Campbell sees in dreams the origins of mythology, art and religion--not inconsiderable responsibilities. The Mythic Image is essentially a distillate of The Masks of God, Campbell's four-volume study of the world's mythologies and sacred beliefs. Illustrated with Egyptian, Indian, Chinese, European and pre-Columbian art, the book is a sumptuous short course in the human imagination.

$30 TO $40

GREAT BOOKS AND BOOK COLLECTORS by Alan G. Thomas. 280 pages. Putnam. $35. An opulently illustrated, often witty guide to bibliophilia and its causes (there is no cure). Author Thomas, a London book dealer, discusses everything from early illuminated manuscripts to the feats of the best printers, bookbinders, illustrators, forgers and dupes. Happily, descriptions focus on people rather than techniques. Of J.P. Morgan, last of the profligate collectors, Thomas writes with typical piquancy: "He pursued the life of an unostentatious gentleman on a majestic scale."

IN AMERICA. Photographs and notes by Ernst Haas. 144 pages. Viking Press. $35. This is a deeply affectionate work: Haas' opening shot of Monument Valley is grand enough to have made John Ford jealous, and his impressionistic multiexposure of nighttime Manhattan should be accompanied by Rhapsody in Blue. More important, the author-photographer knows his territory well enough to make a haunting composition out of a simple line of telephone poles arcing across a bleak valley. In America might be this year's most oblique and intriguing Bicentennial book.

VOLCANO by Maurice and Katia Krafft. Introduction by Eugene Ionesco. 174 pages. Abrams. $35. Authors Maurice and Katia Krafft have spent most of their lives peering into craters reeking of sulfur smoke, standing on the edges of steaming fissures and dodging red rivers of molten lava. Now they celebrate those exotic outlets for earth's potent forces in the most beautiful--and frightening--book on volcanoes ever assembled. Here, for example, is the black cone of Surtsey rising from the sea off Iceland in 1963, the Indonesian volcano Batur shooting lava bombs skyward in 1971, Italy's Stromboli still flaring like a Roman candle, and the lava lake of Zaire's Rugarama glowing as luridly as the lower pits of hell. As Absurdist Playwright Ionesco suggests in his introduction to Volcano, all one has to do is gaze at these awesome pictures to realize that in many locales the Apocalypse is a daily event.

FLAGS: THROUGH THE AGES AND ACROSS THE WORLD by Whitney Smith. 357 pages. McGraw-Hill. $34.95. Man has been making and waving flags for more than 5,000 years and, as Emily Dickinson noted, "No true eye ever went by one steadily." She did not reckon on the scholarly zeal of Whitney Smith. His hefty book conveys an encyclopedia of vexillology (Smith's coinage for the scientific study of flags). His enthusiasm is sometimes unsettling, as if the history of the dog were being told from the point of view of its tail. Yet his sprightly lectures are packed with odd information, and the 2,800 color illustrations that flutter through them make this unquestionably the standard book on standard-bearing.

CLOCKS & WATCHES by Johann Willsberger. Dial. $30. Telling the time was once a minor reason for looking at a clock. In ages more leisurely than the present, timepieces were objects of art as well as of utility, as this album of nearly 130 examples amply proves. Watches were decoratively (and ingeniously) grafted on to fans, necklaces, needle cases and hand mirrors. Clocks were emblazoned with statuary and paintings. Yet Photographer Willsberger presents more than just a collection of pretty faces. Even his earliest samples, dating from the 15th century, are marvels of mathematical complexity. One clock by Abraham Louis Breguet (circa 1810) not only gave the time; it also recorded the lunar date, the earthly day, date, month and year--and the temperature.

$16 TO $29.95

BUTTERFLIES by Thomas C. Emmel. 244 pages. Knopf. $29.95. Some of these rare Lepidoptera are so luminescent they produce optical shock. Even the commoner varieties blend the lyrical with the clinical, intriguing both scientist and layman. Accompanying facts are as remarkable as the closeup images. The ubiquitous orange monarch, for example, is the only true round-trip migrant among the world's 20,000 species. Although only one family of butterflies is called satyrs, most males exhibit an aggressive libido as soon as they emerge from the chrysalis--they can detect females by odor, flight signals, and ultraviolet waves imperceptible to the human eye. Any colors that are perceptible are gathered here in a great rainbow of a book for collectors of butterflies, books, or examples of classic nature photography.

NORMAN ROCKWELL'S AMERICA by Christopher Finch. 313 pages. Abrams. $29.95. Rockwell's forte was home-town America, the sort of country that people still draw in their hearts. Here are his best, including every one of his Saturday Evening Post covers. The section on soldiers' goings and homecomings recalls the days when wars seemed just, and how proud and fine it was to welcome home the boys-become-men who fought them. The 1960s are reflected in some trenchant paintings, among them an indelible portrait of a little black girl on her way to an integrated school, surrounded by U.S. marshals.

THE SEEING HAND: A TREASURY OF GREAT MASTER DRAWINGS by Colin Eisler. Harper & Row. $29.95. The appreciation of drawings tends to be an extremely private pleasure--with good reason. Easily affected by light and air, sketches by the masters are usually kept locked safely away in museum cellars or, more inaccessible, stashed in private collections. Art Historian Colin Eisler combed the museums and collections of the world before allowing more than 300 illustrations to go public. He includes some of the finest examples of draftsmanship, from the French, German and Italian Renaissance to such moderns as Klee, Mondrian and de Kooning. Nearly half of the drawings are meticulously reproduced in their original tints.

DONANA: SPAIN'S WILDLIFE WILDERNESS by Juan Antonio Fernandez. 253 pages. Taplinger. $29.95. Tucked away in a corner of Spain, southwest of Seville, is the Coto de Donana habitat for rare and endangered species: the imperial and short-toed eagles, great bustard, bee eater, azure-winged magpie and, in migration at least, the great flamingo. Those who want to view this ornithological paradise firsthand should be aware of the customary protocol: visitors must get permits from the director of the local biological station to feast their eyes on its plumed riches. This sumptuous pictorial tour cannot compare with a real excursion; on the other hand, it is about one-hundredth the price--and almost as beautiful.

THE LOOK BOOK. Edited by Leo Rosten. 397 pages. Abrams. $29.95. From its first issue in 1937, which carried a cover picture of Reich Marshal Hermann Goering, to its final number in 1971, depicting the preWatergate Nixon White House, Look chronicled and celebrated a generation of American life. Novelist-Humorist Leo Rosten, who was once chief editorial adviser to Look, has pored through back issues to compile this souvenir album. Articles by Norman Mailer, Harry Truman, Eugene O'Neill and others do not stand the test of age. But the powerful pictures of '40s war, '50s politics and '60s frenzy more than compensate for shortcomings in the text.

NIJINSKY DANCING. Text and commentary by Lincoln Kirstein. 177 pages. Knopf. $29.95. Nijinsky spent ten years growing, ten years learning, ten years dancing and 30 years deteriorating. He was an unchallenged performer. His choreographic reputation is less secure: Nijinsky had time to design only four ballets before incurable schizophrenia ended his career. This somewhat overproduced book traces that parabolic career from 1906 to 1917. Producer-Balletomane Lincoln Kirstein's weighty introductory essays are lightened by a hundred astonishing photographs that demonstrate why a dancer 50 years dead continues to leap in the imagination and styles of choreographers everywhere in the world.

PEANUTS JUBILEE by Charles M. Schulz. 222 pages. Holt, Rinehart & Winston. $29.95. Good grief, good old Charlie Brown is 25 years old! The birthday reminder may be a little depressing, but the biography is a multicolored high. With a series of old Sunday strips, black and white panels and prose reminiscences, Peanuts Creator Charles M. Schulz follows his charges from their days as Saturday Evening Post cartoons to the halcyon epoch of Snoopy as the Red Baron, Lucy as a 5-c- psychiatrist, and Charlie Brown as the boy who firmly decides to be wishy one day and washy the next. Schulz's humor remains poignant, whimsical and informed with religious insight--The Gospel According to Peanuts was more than a bestseller; it was the truth.

THE MAGIC IMAGE by Cecil Beaton and Gail Buckland. 304 pages. Little, Brown. $19.95. This is that rarest of items: a photography book in which words are more important than pictures. Authors Beaton, noted stage designer and photographer, and Buckland nave attempted nothing less ambitious than a full history of photography and its practitioners from 1839 to the present. Beaton's introduction is elegant and concise, as are the biographical sketches of more than 200 photographers. Inevitably, gaps and biases appear. Salon and experimental artists receive favored treatment, while the works of such realists as Matthew Brady, Jacob Riis and Walker Evans are hastily passed by. Even so, the book is painless instruction and inspired anthology.

LIFE GOES TO THE MOVIES. 304 pages. TIME-LIFE Books. $19.95. "This book," reads the candid introduction, "is about a magazine's love affair with an industry." It was not unrequited. LIFE's crisp pictorial layouts, its salty reportage and limitless palette made it the studios' favorite. The proof is on view in the pages of this opulent valentine: sections on "The Stars" ("More than there are in heaven" boasted MGM), "The Buildup," "The Movies," "The Studios" and "Behind the Scenes"; pictures of every player from Charlie Chaplin to Dustin Hoffman; stories of scandals, sex and scenarios. Between the book's oversized covers are enough memorabilia to turn the most indifferent Late Show viewer into an instant nostalgia buff--and bring the whole of Hollywood's fabulous past to LIFE.

$15 AND UNDER

KING RENE'S BOOK OF LOVE. Introduction and commentaries by F. Unterkircher. Braziller. $15. During the waning of the Middle Ages, these illuminated manuscripts lighted lives. The medieval characters are allegorical: the Knight Cueur confronts the enemies of Love--Denial, Shame and Fear--in his search for the Lady Sweet Grace. He finds his lady--only to lose her again, and end his days in prayer and remembrance. The story, Cueur d'Amours Espris, was written in 1457; the gold-trimmed illustrations were executed a decade later--possibly by the King himself. An informative commentary precedes each folio, describing its place in the story. That part of the knight's adventures not illustrated is told in the introduction, along with the historical background of Rene, the royal poet. And artist?

A NEEDLEPOINT GALLERY OF PATTERNS FROM THE PAST by Phyllis Kluger. 191 pages. Knopf. $15. No mere woolgathering, the craft of needlepoint combines a meditative activity with the hard-core work ethic. Time is casually suspended stitch by stitch, but in the end something palpable gets done. Phyllis Kluger's stitches in time span nearly 5,000 years--from the arts of ancient Egypt and Byzantium to Renaissance Europe and early America. All are shown in full-color photos as well as instructional graph patterns. Kluger's historical commentary and analysis of her motifs provide an enriching dimension. One of the best needlepoint books of this or any other year.

SHIPWRECK by John Fowles. Photographs by the Gibsons of Stilly. Little, Brown. $7.95. Four generations of the Gibson family have photographed dramatic shipwrecks off the Cornish coast of southwest England. They rarely lacked subjects. As Novelist John Fowles argues, this patch of ocean "may well be the most terrible ten square miles in maritime history." Some 2,000 British seamen drowned there one night in 1707; the most celebrated recent victim was the oil freighter Torrey Canyon, which was reduced to catastrophic flotsam in 1967. The Gibsons' pictures (the earliest dating from 1872) all capture the ruined beauty of such ships: "As tragic," Fowles writes, "as the vanished masterpieces of great sculptors."

ARTHUR RACKHAM; DULAC; THE ENGLISH DREAMERS; THE CHRISTMAS BOOK; TEMPTATION. Edited by David Larkin. Bantam Books. $5.95 each. With tireless research and unfailing taste, Editor David Larkin has assembled this striking series of low-priced museums without walls. Arthur Rackham and Dulac celebrate the greatest book illustrators of the Edwardian epoch. The English Dreamers displays the lush, romantic works of such pre-Raphaelites as Burne-Jones and Millais. The Christmas Book is a rich survey of Yuletide art from ancient Collier's magazine covers to the naive masterworks of Grandma Moses. Only one caveat: four of these five bargains would grace any child's library. Temptation, however, offers explicit pictures like Dali's Young Virgin Auto-Sodomized by Her Own Chastity. The book must carry an unseasonal rating of R.

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