THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, December 4, 1994 TAG: 9412010410
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J2 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Book Review
SOURCE: BY GAIL GRIFFIN
LENGTH: Long : 114 lines
'Tis the season for gift-giving, and publishers have released a cornucopia of coffee-table books - oversized, lavish productions for those who have everything. This sampling should suit a variety of discriminating readers:
ART/PHOTOGRAPHY
A Day in the Life of Israel (Collins, $45) continues the popular ``Day in the Life'' series in which a group of photojournalists documents an ordinary 24 hours in a chosen setting. By chance, the day chosen for this book, May 5, 1994, was special: the beginning of official peace between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization. The resulting photographs, far-ranging in style, tone and quality, carry the added significance of history.
Evidence: 1944-1994 (Random House, $49.50) accompanies a traveling retrospective of photographer Richard Avedon's work that originated at the Whitney Museum of Art in New York. It allows readers to dig through ``evidence'' in a variety of forms: not only the photos themselves, but also sketches, contact sheets, snapshots, works shown in progress and later in published form. Evidence is weighty (literally and figuratively) but worthwhile for both admirers of Avedon, now a staff photographer at The New Yorker, and those interested in exploring the link between the artist's mind and the camera's lens.
Jacob Lawrence: The Migration Series (Rappahannock Press, $25 paper) accompanies a traveling exhibition of a 60-painting series by Jacob Lawrence, who documented the mass movement of millions of African Americans in the early 20th century. Released last year in hardcover and this year in paperback, it includes essays by art and history scholars such as Henry Louis Gates Jr.
Renoir's Table: The Art of Living and Dining with One of the World's Greatest Impressionist Painters (Simon & Schuster, $35) combines art, biography, cooking and travel to offer a taste of the good life as Pierre Auguste Renoir lived it in 19th-century France. It transcends the usual art-book fare by adding some unusual ingredients, such as photos re-creating typical Renoir settings and recipes for many dishes popular at the time.
MUSIC
Bob Marley: Spirit Dancer (Norton, $35 hardcover, $17.95 paper), by photographer Bruce Talamon and writer Roger Steffens, depicts the life and times of reggae artist Bob Marley, who became a legend after his death from cancer in 1981. Readers looking for straight biography would be better served elsewhere: This is two fans' homage, treating Marley in godlike terms.
Sweet Swing Blues on the Road (W.W. Norton, $29.95) takes readers behind the scenes of the jazz life. Musician Wynton Marsalis offers a series of 12 impressionistic riffs on touring with his band, accompanied by powerful black-and-white photos from Frank Stewart. Marsalis' soliloquies, and his dialogues with band members, range from the sacred to the profane but never fail to offer insight into the meaning of jazz.
SCIENCE
Ape Man: The Story of Human Evolution (Macmillan, $30), the companion book to the Arts & Entertainment network documentary series airing this fall, traces humankind's progress through the stages of evolution, based on interviews with scientists worldwide. Functional, straightforward and dry, Ape Man reads like a primate, er, primer.
Hindenburg: An Illustrated History (Warner/Madison Press, $60) is a colorful history of the dirigible, once thought to hold the key to the future of flight. Illustrated by historical photographs, paintings re-creating flights of the aircraft and diagrams, including an elaborate foldout of the doomed Hindenburg, this lavish book recalls a long-lost era of air travel.
The title of Minerals (Simon & Schuster, $40) pretty much says it all, but the first-person text by mineralogist George W. Robinson makes it considerably less stuffy than the average earth-science textbook. So do the beautiful photos and easy-to-understand diagrams.
SPORTS
At first glance, aging golf icon Arnold Palmer and still-great hockey star Wayne Gretzky don't seem to have much in common. But a further look shows the similarities: Both men, classy competitors and top-notch athletes, have been lionized as symbols of their sports. Two biographies, Arnold Palmer: A Personal Journey (Collins Publishers/Opus, $40) and Wayne Gretzky: The Official Pictorial Biography (Firefly/Opus, $29.95), share an elegance in design, use of photography and typography that reflects their subjects well.
Photojournalist/writer Arlene Schulman spent 10 years immersing herself in the boxing culture to create The Prizefighters: An Intimate Look at Champions and Contenders (Lyons & Burford, $27.95) - time enough, it seems, to understand why these driven men do what they do. Yet the book - with uneven photography and mediocre design - disappoints somewhat. Only the writing provides insight into the beauty behind the brutality.
TELEVISION/FILM
Back before Douglas Adams' series of science fiction spoofs turned tiresome, the 1979 original charmed. In The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, perfectly normal Earthling Arthur Dent is flung from his London routine into a galaxy-spanning adventure. Now comes a reissue of that book, The Illustrated Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (Crown, $42), complete with scenes from the British television series of the same name and decorated with funky typography. Stylish, but readers who want to preserve their own mental pictures of Adams' wacked-out universe should avoid it.
God forbid the flailing comedy institution last another 20 years, but fans can remember the glory days in Saturday Night Live: The First Twenty Years (Houghton Mifflin, $25), which includes sections on cast members, guest hosts, commercial parodies, music, ``Weekend Update'' and a week in the life of ``SNL.'' Pop-culture mavens, meanwhile, can delight in the full text of great sketches that launched many catch phrases of the past two decades. The book provides an exhaustive look at ``SNL'' trivia with a frenetic design befitting the series.
Star Trek: `Where No One Has Gone Before.' A History in Pictures (Pocket Books, $45), an obsequious paean to ``Star Trek'' for Trekkies only, charts the show's path from the original series to the planned ``Voyager'' show. MEMO: Gail Griffin is a staff editor. ILLUSTRATION: Photos
Jacket design by JOEL AVIROM
Jacket design by BETH TONDREAU DESIGN
by CNB