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ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY RECOMMENDS: BOOKS |
Coffee-table book picks for the holidays
(Entertainment Weekly) -- A truly fabulous coffee-table book is as much a cause for celebration as decoration. With the holiday season upon us, Entertainment Weekly editors suggest a little eye candy with your eggnog.
''Americans in Kodachrome'' Guy Stricherz (Twin Palms, $60) Make sure to pop in a Paul Simon CD before you feast your eyes on '''Americans in Kodachrome,'' a golden-hued collection of family photos from 1945 to 1965. Stricherz was inspired by a 1952 slide of his own family -- ''my father, coach of our hometown champion Hornets, his blue football jacket over a white T-shirt, and my mother the immaculate homemaker with a Mona Lisa smile.'' He embarked on a 17-year cross-country search for other Kodachromes of ordinary folk. The result is a wildly rich document of postwar America, steeped in easy nostalgic charm. Swoon over photos like ''Blue Prom Dress'' and ''Jerry and his '57 Chevy.'' Photo captions aside, there's little text. Stricherz lets the colors tell the story.
''Planet Earth'' Introduction by Robert Hughes (Knopf, $40) Los Angeles from up above appears sweetly benign. A stray rain cloud stretches over the Sahara desert. A Siberian tundra looks like an intricate block of blue cheese. Take an extra moment with the shot of Jerusalem, listed as one of the ''sacred sites of humanity.'' Planet Earth, in all her awesome, fragile glory, has never looked better than in these 150 full-color satellite images. ''One looks at them with a degree of bewilderment,'' writes Hughes. ''They are images...of our eternal home (for certainly we have no other).''
''The Art of Noir: The Posters and Graphics From the Classic Era of Film Noir'' Eddie Muller (Overlook, $50) ''Maybe I should have called it gats and gams,'' writes Muller about his book's ''cavalcade of thrusting firearms and illicitly exposed legs.'' Noir stars Humphrey Bogart, Burt Lancaster, and Joan Crawford peer out with promises of seduction and betrayal from lurid and lovely movie posters. Edmond O'Brien and Lizabeth Scott starred in 1951's ''Two of a Kind.'' Per the poster: ''The kind that don't die in bed!''
''Zoo York: An Animal Lover's View of Manhattan'' Piero Ribelli (Castle on the Hill, $20) Puppies pull a baby carriage. A potbellied pig takes a stroll past Lincoln Center. A calico cat stares out at the vast Manhattan skyline from his lamp-lit apartment window. A roach sits belly-up... well, not all of Ribelli's photos of New York's smaller citizens are endearing. The perfect stocking stuffer, stuffed with scenes of horseplay and monkey business.
''Sinatra: An Intimate Portrait of a Very Good Year'' John Dominis, text by Richard B. Stolley (Stewart Tabori & Chang, $30) Suffering from winter blues? Then self-medicate with a dose of Ol' Blue Eyes. The crooner turned 50 years old in 1965; he turned his back on the press long before that. Judging from these 150 extraordinary black-and-white pictures taken that year -- of Sinatra drinking, flirting, singing, and swinging -- Life magazine lensman Dominis must have been a very good boy to score such sweet access. The best photo? A shot of Sammy Davis Jr. tenderly palming Sinatra's drink-slackened jaw.
''Photographic Memory'' William Claxton, introduction by Graydon Carter (powerHouse, $65) Claxton is most famous for his pictures of early jazz giants. Just check out the shot of Chet Baker, looking sweet and sculpted in a fitted white sweater. (''He looked like an angelic boxer,'' remembers Claxton, ''a tough guy with a pretty face topped with a slick '50s pompadour.'') But the jazz lover also captured the vulnerability of a young Mia Farrow, the silliness of Terry Southern, the smugness of Joni Mitchell, and many more famous faces.
''A Book of Books'' Abelardo Morell, preface by Nicholson Baker (Bulfinch, $60) A close-up of three stacked dictionaries. A wide shot of a library. The heartbreak, and visual splendor, of a book damaged by water. Sprinkled among these fine, handsome pages are musings from famous bibliophiles like Jane Austen and Pablo Neruda. Here's Eudora Welty on her long-standing love affair: ''I cannot remember a time when I was not in love with them -- with the books themselves, cover and binding and the paper they were printed on, with their smell and their weight and with their possession in my arms....'' She surrendered. So will you.
