Scanning the Bookshelf

Put away that Kindle and computer screen and pick up a book — a coffee-table book with beautiful color pictures to ponder, text to study and, sometimes, three-dimensional extras to examine.

Everyone has his own favorites and I'll name mine later, but consider these choice picks for your holiday wish list:

What's Christmas without Americana nostalgia as depicted in "Norman Rockwell's Christmas Book" (Abrams, $29.95), a reprint of an earlier collection of Christmas carol sheet music, stories, poems and recipes. The extras are eight suitable-for-framing prints (favorite: boy with puppy).

How about some good humor in a grim economic downturn: See "The New Yorker on the Money: The Economy in Cartoon, 1925-2009" (Andrews McMeel Publishing, $24.99). Each decade has its ironic twist, from the 1920s street sweeper asking in a boom time, "I don't suppose you know where Cartier's is?" to a lady in a limo, to, in this decade, a conversation between two angels watching a giant meteor headed for Earth: "I suppose they'll expect a bailout."

Picture books offer endless pleasure, especially the photos by the master Ansel Adams; in this case, not his signature black-and-white but "Ansel Adams in Color" (Little, Brown and Co., $35). Check out "Sunset at Death Valley" and "Jeffrey Pine on Sentinel Dome" in Yosemite, both shot about 1948. If a picture's worth a thousand words, a color picture is worth a thousand poems.

For people pix, check out "Photo: Box" (Abrams, $29.95), 250 photos from the dawn of photography to today by some of the world's greatest photographers and their most iconic images. Some shown here include Elvis primping in 1956 by Alfred Wertheimer, Marilyn in bed in 1960 by Eve Arnold and Dorothea Lange's "Migrant Mother" in California in 1936. There also are images of nature, war, major events and art (a contemporary "Last Summer" by David LaChapelle in 2003 is a standout).

Photographer Mike Torrey weighs in with "Stone Offerings: Machu Picchu's Terraces of Enlightenment" (Lightpoint Press, $40). Visiting the Peruvian capital of the ancient Incas at the summer and winter solstice, Torrey captured the cloud-enshrouded stone remains of a storied civilization. Words aren't needed when exploring this visually enchanting place.

Another notable book has a local angle: Getty Conservation Institute's "The California Missions" ($39.95), which of course started with the Mission San Diego de Alcala, the first of the 21 Spanish missions that Franciscan friars built from 1769 onward. Written by the late Edna E. Kimbro, a renowned architectural conservator and historian; Julia G. Costello, an expert on archaeology and cultural resources; and Getty Publications editor Tevvy Ball, the 276-page book with an equal number of photos goes beyond the usual reverential look at missions and delves into the missions' architecture, art collections and preservation challenges.

The second part of the book profiles each mission.

Nature is best seen in person and, next, in moving pictures, but the stop action and poses in oversized books erase the boundary between man and the environment. That's most evident and instructive in "Planet Ape" by Desmond Morris with Steve Parker (Firefly Books, $49.95), in which human and ape are compared and contrasted brilliantly.

"Bird" (Chronicle Books, $60) is photographer Andrew Zuckerman's answer to John James Audubon's drawings — close-ups against white backgrounds in two-page spreads. Some birds spread across two large pages; others get a tiny corner, the rest left in white space.

"A Shadow Falls" by Nick Brandt (Abrams, $50) depicts the tragedy of threatened species. The lion on Page 63 doesn't roar; he's resting — we hope, not worrying about his survival.

Four of this year's books are at the top of my must-have list:

"Jack Kennedy: The Illustrated Life of a President" by Chuck Wills (Chronicle Books, $45) is literally a scrapbook of the days of Camelot. Even if you're not a JFK fan, you'll enjoying pulling out reproductions of notes, invitations, campaign brochures and boyhood memories (1930 postcard: "Dear mother, Just arrived and very tired and going to the capitol tomorrow (sic). Good night. Love Jack.")

"Star Wars: 1,000 Collectibles — Memorabilia and Stories From a Galaxy Far, Far Away" (Abrams, $35) is Stephen J. Sansweet's catalog of his collection of 75,000-plus items drawn from that "galaxy far, far away." Even after 32 years, the force is still with us. (Get a load of the Battle of Hoth snow globe!)

A flat-screen-sized entry in the coffee-table book derby is "Queer Visitors From the Marvelous Land of Oz" (Sunday Press, $75). This is a full-scale reproduction of the 1904-1905 Sunday newspaper comic pages that L. Frank Baum wrote (illustrated by comic pioneer Walt McDougall) as he was launching his "Land of Oz" sequel to the "Wizard of Oz." I first saw this book at last summer's Comic-Con, where publisher Peter Maresca recalled his painstaking efforts to stitch together and restore original newspaper copies of "Queer Visitors" and other comic page Oz tales. The book includes other examples from the comic book history of Oz that continues today and reminds us that there's more to Oz than MGM's "Over the Rainbow" movie.

Finally, my favorite of the season is "Animation" (Disney Editions, $50), the second in the Walt Disney Animation Studios archive series (the first was "Story," issued last year). Original animator drawings, some shown in sequence in foldout spreads, illustrate the artistry that went into making Mickey, Goofy, Snow White and this year's Tiana (in the upcoming "Princess and the Frog" movie).

While it's always fun to sit back and enjoy the moving drawings on the screen, it's an equal pleasure to study the draftsmanship that lies behind each frame in a cartoon feature: Dumbo climbing onto his mother's trunk, Captain Hook buttonholing Smee, Madame Medusa pulling off an eyelash, Beast transforming into the prince.

The Internet beckons us all, but it's the printed word and visual image on the page that you can snuggle up with on Christmas morning. No battery required.

To find out more about Roger Showley and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

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