Gift books offer the best of the year
@ by:by Don Kazak
The publishing world may be somewhat in the doldrums, but publishers are still pushing glitzy, big books aimed at our eyes and credit cards for the holiday season.
There's a wide range of offerings this year from coffee table photo books to historical references on note worthy people.
Two favorites from last year back in new form are "Ansel Adams at 100," a collection of his best photographs, now available in more affordable paperback, and "Earth From Above, 366 Days," an expanded edition of the photos taken far above the earth.
For the surfers out there, there are two books worth noting. "The Encyclopedia of Surfing" is a comprehensive look at the sport in detail, while "Mavericks" is a celebration of the big-wave surfing area along the San Mateo County coast that draw's the world's most adventurous surfers.
There are a spate of JFK books on the 40th anniversary of his assassination, the most attractive being "John Fitzgerald Kennedy: A Life in Pictures."
Among the books about artists, "Goya" may be the big book of the season, with text by noted art critic Robert Hughes.
There is also a book titled "On Fire" on prairie fires, of all things, which is oddly beautiful and riveting.
And for the Monty Python in us all, the definitive book about the British comedy troupe, written by its members, is now out. "The Pythons" is exhaustive in detail, with photos and illustrations.
"America 24/7" by Rick Smolan and David Elliot Cohen; DK Publishing; 304 pp.; $50
Remember those wonderful "A Day in the Life" books from a while back? The authors of this book, "America 24/7," were the creators of that acclaimed series.
The concept behind "24/7" is unusual. It's not extraordinary that everything was photographed in the book between the week of May 12-18, 2003.
The unusual aspect is that the publisher and editors didn't send out teams of professional photographers to scour the country. Instead, the publisher set up a Web site and invited anyone with a digital camera to send in images.
Sure, there are plenty of professional photographers who responded, but also amateurs and student photographers.
The result is stunning.
There are scenes of everyday life, sometimes humorous, sometimes touching. Harrison Ford's Hollywood "star" is readied by a workman, Rochester, N.Y. ballerinas are perfectly suspended in a leap, a game of basketball on donkeys is played in Oregon. There is a stunning view of America twinkling at night from space, and a couple at a New Jersey senior prom is caught on film -- the guy with loosened tie and his dazzling date busy talking to someone else on her cell phone.
"Joseph Cornell: Shadowplay . . . Eterniday," by Lynda Roscoe Hartigan, Walter Hopps, Richard Vine, and Robert Lahrman; Thames & Hudson; 256 pp.; $60
Joseph Cornell is the artist famous for his "boxes" of art: Putting photographs, drawings and objects in small and not-so-small boxes. Cornell's art is, in form, like the dioramas kids make for school art projects.
His "Soap Bubble Set" from 1948 includes a glass goblet with a crunched up newspaper page inside it, a series of balls, and a white, clay pipe. "Swan Lake for Tamara Toumanova" from 1946 pays homage to the ballet. Inside the box, there is a framed photo of a swan. The photo is surrounded by soft, white feathers.
The book includes three essays explaining his work, a commentary, photographs of him at work, a bibliography, and a catalog of the pieces shown in the book, including what collection or museum they are in.
"Movies of the 70s" by Jurgen Muller; Taschen; 736 pp.; $39.99
For many film lovers, the 1970s represent a high-water mark in creativity, a golden age of individualist directors making their marks.
And what marks they made. "A Clockwork Orange," "The French Connection," "Harold and Maude," "The Last Picture Show" and "Klute" isn't a bad lineup of movies. And that's just 1971.
These are the Godfather years, the Star Wars years. How could cinema exist without "American Graffiti"? This is also the decade of Woody Allen's best, "Annie Hall."
The directors included a bunch of guys named Altman, Scorcese, Lucas, Coppola and some newcomer named Spielberg.
And Coppola did not win the Oscar for directing "The Godfather." (Bob Fosse won for "Cabaret").
The book is lavish with photos from the movies, snippets of reviews at the time, and the author's commentary on the films, actors and directors. This is a book for movie lovers to get lost in.
"Diane Arbus Revelations"; Random House; 352 pp.; $100
Diane Arbus was one of the most influential photographers of the 1960s whose work is enjoying a renaissance now at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
The book is a collection of 200 of her images along with a very detailed biography, including a year-by-year chronology of her life.
Arbus, sadly, committed suicide in 1971 at age 48.
Some of the images are startling for their historical perspective, while others could have been taken last week -- they are that timeless.
One of the historical photos shows a boy in 1967 wearing a straw hat and a lapel button that says "God Bless America Support Our Boys in Vietnam" and the other lapel has a button that says "Bomb Hanoi."
Many of her subjects are gazing directly into the camera, almost defiantly, with nothing to hide (literally, in many cases). Others are more askance.
The photographs are more questions than answers. "A photograph is a secret about a secret," Arbus once wrote. "The more it tells you the less you know."
"The Passion for Gardening: Inspiration of a Lifetime," by Ken Druse; Clarkson Potter Publishers; 256 pp.; $50
Ken Druse is a gardener and author, and has taken time to write why he has such a passion for gardening, what he gets out of it, and how it can be a counterpoint to our otherwise jumbled days with hectic schedules.
Druse decries the instant gardening products and the quick way to backyard beauty.
"This attitude devalues the appeal that gardening holds for many of us," he writes. "It assumes that making a garden is as simple as putting up Christmas decorations: buy a few geegaws, plus them in, turn them on, and then move on to the next activity. It promotes decorator gardens full of 'colorful plant material' which are 'installed' (as if they were appliances to one-up the Joneses and then ignored until they need to be freshened up and dusted off for the next party. Yes, there will always be fashions, fads and trends in gardening. . . . But gardening itself will never be a fad, as the longtime involvement of so many of us make clear."
There is wise counsel and sound advice here. The book also has gorgeous photos.
"Hidden Treasures of San Francisco Bay," photographs by Dennis E. Anderson; Heyday Books; $29.95
This slim paperbound photography book is of the familiar: How many more photos do any of us need to see of Golden Gate Bridge?
Well, at least one more, on top of the North Tower in almost incandescent bright orange, with San Francisco in the background.
The vistas of the Bay and sailboats with white waves churning beneath their bows are here. But there are also the salt ponds, the birds, the flowers and little Bay critters.
Boats and people are included generously, making the Bay less of a study for a painting and more of a living thing which we interact with.
Don Kazak can be e-mailed at dkazak@paweekly.com
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