Books: Good for Giving

Were it not for the Christmas spirit, U.S. publishing would be a far less prosperous enterprise than it is. This year the trade is ready once again for the growing number of people whose gift problems seem to be most easily resolved by handsome, outsize volumes, preferably loaded with pictures. A sampling of the current product:

A CURRIER & IVES TREASURY, edited by Colin Simkin (Crown; $10), contains 80 prints in color, generous in size (10 in. by 14 in.), and calculated to hasten the pulse of anyone devoted to forthright Americana.

THE SELECTIVE EYE, edited by Georges and Rosamond Bernier (193pp.; Random House; $7.95), presents material from France’s outstanding art magazine L’Oeil (The Eye) and ranges over world art, past and present. The articles are illuminating, the painting, sculpture and photographs are beautifully reproduced.

HENRY’S WONDERFUL MODEL T, by Floyd Clymer (219 pp.; McGraw-Hill; $5.95), and TIN LIZZIE, by Philip Van Doren Sfern (180 pp.; Simon & Schuster; $3.95), celebrate the rugged lifetime (1908-27) of that noble and uncommon carrier, the Model T Ford. The splendid pictures and authoritative text are guaranteed to bring out the old nostalgia.

COSMOPOLITAN WORLD ATLAS [Rand McNally; $13.95) is a fine new atlas chockful of up-to-the-minute information about every quarter of the globe.

THE ILLUSTRATED TREASURY OF CHILDREN’S LITERATURE, edited by Margaret E.

Martignoni (5 12 pp.; Grosset & Dun lap; $4.95), is the year’s bargain in children’s books, a fat, discriminating collection of writing from Beatrix Potter to Phyllis McGinley, and illustrations by such immortals as Kate Greenaway, Arthur Rackham, Palmer Cox and others nearly as good. If there really is a comic-book menace abroad, this book is much the best way to cope with it.

THE LOOK OF THE OLD WEST, by Foster-Harris (301 pp.; Viking; $7.50), may be the closest look of all during a year especially rich in books on the subject. Practically a how-to-do-it of western life, its drawings illustrate everything from saloon cuspidors to the Deadwood stagecoach.

A TREASURY OF CHRISTMAS SONGS AND CAROLS, edited by Henry W. Simon (242 pp.; Houghton Mifflin; $4.95), brings together in words and music the old British and U.S. favorites, a pleasing selection from foreign countries, and songs for children.

CIVIL WAR IN PICTURES, by Fletcher Pratt (256 pp.; Holt; $10), systematically works a vein that the Civil War industry, publishing division, has often pecked at before. The drawings especially still have an attraction, mostly gruesome, that is hard to resist.

THE BOOK OF THE MOUNTAINS, edited by A. C. Spectorsky (492 pp.; Apple-ton-Century-Crofts; $10), might seem to leave ex-Exurbanite Author Spectorsky (TIME, Nov. 7) hanging over a crevasse after the year’s avalanche of good books on mountaineering. In fact, though, this is an attractive anthology of writing about mountains and mountain people, with generally good drawings and photographs.

MAMMALS OF THE WORLD, by Francois Bourliere (223 pp.; Knopf; $12.50), and LIVING MAMMALS OF THE WORLD, by Ivan T. Sanderson (303 pp.; Hanover House; $9.95), are excellent introductions to the world’s animal life, the first perhaps more scholarly, the second more readable and rich in color photographs.

THE REPTILE WORLD, by Clifford H.

Pope (325 pp.; Knopf; $7.50). Snakes, lizards, crocodiles and such are really handsome creatures for those who can stand a close look.

TOWN HALL TONIGHT, by Harlowe Randall Hoyt (292 pp.; Prentice-Hall; $7.50), is a somewhat casual and bluntly nostalgic backward look at the small-town theater of the ’80s and ‘905, when Uncle Tom’s Cabin and The Old Homestead were sure to extract their quota of tears. The illustrations are of appropriate corniness.