GIFT BOOKS

Big and beautiful

By Richard Dyer, Globe Staff, 12/2/2001

The best gift book is something you have read and loved so much that you want to pass it on to your friends. In that sense, any book can make a perfect gift. But there is also a particular category in publishing known as the ''gift book'' - a luxury item, designed to be looked at as well as read, a tribute to the interests or taste of the recipient as well as those of the giver, something to be held and admired by visitors.

One gift book this year can't really wait until Christmas - it's ''The World Encyclopedia of Christmas'' by Gerald Bowler (McClelland and Stewart, $39.95), an astonishing survey of varied secular and sacred Christmas lore. There's an amusing entry on department store Santas (''The ideal department store Santa is described as middle-aged, plump, red-faced, and possessing his own beard, with an ability to charm children and pass a police background check''), and a list of historical events that took place on Dec. 25. The first recorded celebration of Christmas was in Rome in AD 336; in 1959, Richard Starkey (Ringo Starr) received his first drum set.

The Smithsonian Institution's ''Animal'' calls itself ''The Definitive Visual Guide to the World's Wildlife'' (DK, $50). It contains pictures and profiles of more than 2,000 living creatures, and much curious lore about them. An unsettling and sad supplement comes from Atlantic Monthly Press, ''A Gap in Nature: Discovering the World's Extinct Animals'' ($34.95) - a survey of 103 birds, reptiles, and mammals that have disappeared from our world since 1492, with wonderful illustrations by wildlife artist Peter Schouten. There is no particular reason to believe the dodo was stupid, although it was ill adapted to survive - dodos weighed about 50 pounds, but their wings were too small to permit flight. There was a stuffed dodo in the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford, but in 1755 it was deaccessioned - someone did save the head and the right foot before burning the rest.

Several titles are of particular local interest. ''Boston: A Photographic Portrait'' (Twin Lights, $24.95) has some postcard-perfect images garnered from a photography contest, but the city looks like a stage set in most of the pictures - a stage set with no performance going on. There is a peculiar lack of people, traffic, and life in most of these striking images. ''Rockport, Massachusetts: A Village by the Sea'' (Commonwealth Editions, $24.95) collects work picturing this popular destination by photographer Andrew Borsari, who maintains a popular gallery on Tuna Wharf; the wonderful textures of light in Rockport are imaginatively caught in these pictures. ''Nantucket Impressions'' (Norton, $50) is a collection of photographs by Robert Gambee with just enough text to provide context. Peter Vanderwarker's ''The Big Dig: Reshaping an American City'' (Little, Brown, $17.95) explains how this urban renewal project will ''provide the solution to problems that for decades have caused major headaches for people driving in and out of this major American city,'' which people who have had to drive through it for the last decade will be relieved to know. Some of the information is interesting and helpful, but there is nothing to suggest that the project has ever been touched by controversy and scandal.

''A Studio of Her Own: Women Artists in Boston 1870-1940'' by Erica E. Hirshler (MFA Publications, $40) is a companion to a popular current exhibition at the Museum of Fine Arts. It is an intelligent survey of the intersection among feminist, cultural, and artistic issues in a pivotal 70-year period.

More distant destinations are amply represented in this year's group of titles. ''Ireland'' (BHB International, $75) collects outstanding photographs by Gerald and Marc Hoberman (father and son) with a text by Maggie Davey. This book does boast humanizing detail - opposite an image of the seat of Parliament, Leinster House, is a picture of Leo Burdock's fish-and-chip shop. William R. Chapman's ''The Face of Tibet'' (University of Georgia Press, $45) opens with a preface by the Dalai Lama himself. The pictures, many of them taken in places that are inaccessible to most visitors, depict the imperiled survival of a unique culture.

''Women of Discovery'' by Milbry Polk and Mary Tiegreen celebrates ''the intrepid women who explored the world'' (Clarkson Potter, $40) - among them Alexandra David-Neel, the first Western woman to reach Tibet's capital, Lhasa; she was made of strong stuff, and lived a full century.

A beautiful photograph of David-Neel's cart in China reveals that she traveled with a washtub; the rest of Western civilization she was happy to leave behind - she wasn't the corset-wearing type. Valerie Steele's ''The Corset: A Cultural History'' appears under the august imprint of the Yale University Press ($39.95). The corset was worn by Western women for 400 years, although now it is reviled as a symbol and instrument of oppression. Steele argues for a more complex interpretation, and points out that diet and exercise have replaced corsetry as fetishes and quotes feminist writers who feel that one stereotype has replaced another. The book has spirit and charm. It does not shirk; neither does it smirk.

''Dear Friends: American Photographs of Men Together 1840-1918'' by David Deitcher is a collection of old pictures of unknown men in ''comradely'' embrace (Harry N. Abrams, $35). The poignant images are only indirectly erotic - who were these people and what was their relationship to each other? One thinks, inevitably, of Whitman. Deitcher's intelligent and speculative text traces the ambiguous social history of male friendship in America.

Some of the men in the photographs are cowboys, and there is an unforgettable image of a cowboy dance. A very different image of the cowboy appears in ''How the West Was Worn'' by Holly George-Warren and Michelle Freedman (Abrams, $45), a history of cowboy clothes as costume. One of the most famous designers for cowboy and country music stars was Nudie Cohn, known by his first name, and celebrated in the book as the inventor of the ''rhinestone cowboy.'' Nudie outfits command amazing prices on eBay today, and the ones photographed in the book are outstanding in the whimsy of their design and the bravura of their craftsmanship. The book was produced in cooperation with the (Gene) Autry Museum of Western Heritage in Los Angeles.

''The American Heritage New History of The Civil War'' (Metro Books, $24.98) reproduces Bruce Catton's text from the best-selling first edition of 1960, with abundant new illustrations, captions, and sidebars edited by James M. McPherson. ''The Jews in the Twentieth Century: An Illustrated History'' by the distinguished British historian Martin Gilbert (Schocken, $50) chronicles the most recent and horrific century of Jewish history. While it does not minimize the Holocaust, it does emphasize heroism and resistance, and honors the Jewish contribution to learning, science, the arts, and entertainment - the Marx Brothers, Barbra Streisand, and Goldie Hawn are in it too.

Some luxury books naturally discuss luxury items. ''Pearls: A Natural History'' (Abrams, $49.50) might make an attractive, if weighty, pendant to a gift of pearls. Prepared with the cooperation of the American Museum of Natural History and the Field Museum, this book depicts the science, history, culture, and art of one of the world's most prized ornaments. ''The New Sotheby's Wine Encyclopedia: A Comprehensive Reference Guide to the Wines of the World'' by Tom Stevenson appears in a revised and updated third edition (DK, $50), staggering in the amount of detail, and 120 pages longer than its predecessor.

The masterpiece of choreographer Mark Morris - to date - is ''L'Allegro, Il Penseroso ed Il Moderato,'' celebrated in a book edited by Jeffrey Escoffier and Matthew Lore (Marlow, $50). Originally planned for the Boston Ballet, the work was finally created at the Theatre de la Monnaie in Brussels, and it has been seen around the world ever since. The book contains wonderful photographs of the dances, critical analyses, memoirs and histories, and a complete list of the dancers who have appeared in it since 1988. The conspicuous and appalling omissions are Craig Smith, who conducted the premiere and many of the subsequent performances; any list of the other conductors, orchestras, and ensembles that have played it; and any mention of the company of singers that have sung it.

''The Complete Lyrics of Irving Berlin,'' edited by Robert Kimball and Berlin's daughter Linda Emmett (Knopf, $65), collects the texts of 1,200 songs by one of America's definitive composers - a man more celebrated for his melodies than his words. Kimball is fully aware that more adventurous composers and more skilled lyricists were at work in the field. ''Still, a great song is something quite apart from all this. It is an individual statement that makes its appeal in taking something personal, local, perhaps transient, and transforming that notion through the skillful mating of words and music into a universal truth for millions. The ability to capture and represent the human experience in a simple, direct way is what the greatest songwriting is all about. That is where Irving Berlin has few, if any, peers.'' Of these texts, 400 have never been printed before - Berlin wrote lyrics until 1987, when he was 99. A note to Groucho Marx said, ''The world would not be in such a snarl/If Marx had been Groucho instead of Karl.''

A more recent Broadway triumph is reproduced in ''The Producers: The Book, Lyrics, and Story Behind the Biggest Hit in Broadway History'' by Mel Brooks and Tom Meehan (Talk Miramax, $40). This is a how-they-did-it book, and it costs less than a ticket to see the show - and you can buy it in any bookstore.

''Beatles Gear'' (Backbeat, $40) provides a history of the Beatles' instruments and equipment - and therefore a history of their sound. The famous ''harpsichord'' in ''In My Life'' turns out to be a piano, played at half speed and an octave down; when the tape was played back at normal speed, it sounded like a harpsichord. Producer George Martin engagingly confessed, ''I couldn't play it at real speed anyway.''

''I Love Lucy'' by Elisabeth Edwards (Running Press, $39.95), produced in collaboration with the estates of Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz, celebrates the 50th anniversary of one of the most popular shows in television's history - 179 episodes, plus an additional 13 in 1959-60. The book gives a brief synopsis of every program, with interviews with four writers who are still alive and with Keith Thibodeaux, who played Little Ricky. There is a list of guest stars, extras, and songs; there are many trivia quizzes and several entertaining pages of ''I Love Lucy'' memorabilia - the postage stamp, the candy bar, the watch, the ice cream sandwich, the dolls, the board game, and, of course, the Christmas ornament.

Richard Dyer is a member of the Globe Staff.

This story ran on page E4 of the Boston Globe on 12/2/2001.
© Copyright 2001 Globe Newspaper Company.