Books: PRESENTATION PIECES

MOST gift books are glossy of cover, bland of content, irreproachably expensive. They are intended to flatter rather than to instruct or entertain.

But books can make fine gifts. Herewith a sampling of costlier presentation pieces that deserve to be read (or looked at), not just given.

LAROUSSE GASTRONOMIQUE, by Prosper Montagné (1,101 pp.; Crown: $20). In this large, well-illustrated American edition of the famous French encyclopedia of food and cooking are recipes for almost everything edible, definitions of culinary terms, and such curiosa as a description of what Louis XIV liked to eat for dinner (the fifth course consisted of various fresh-water fish cooked in pastry, and was intended to remove the taste of the larks, ortolans, thrushes, capons, woodcocks, young turkeys, young hares, sweetbreads, ham, forcemeats, hot pâtés and fritures that had preceded it). Its completeness may be judged from the fact that it contains not only an entry for alligator pear (under avocado) but one for alligator: “The most valued parts of the reptile are the paws or flappers . . . prepared á L’américaine [or] á L’indienne.”

WHAT’S GOT YOUR BACK UP? by Bill Mouldin (146 pp.; Harper; $3.95). Herblock is clearly Mauldin’s master and Daumier his god; this collection of his work proves that he has edged past the one and is moving determinedly, in quality of line and force of wit, toward the other. The best cartoon book of the season.

MASTERPIECES OF JAPANESE SCULPTURE, with text by J. Edward Kidder Jr. (328 pp.; Tuttle; $27.50). A large, well-illustrated historical survey; the photographs, most of them black and white, are superb, and the compilers have broken up what might have been a tedious procession of figures with excellent detailed closeups. The subjects, of course, run to delicate, serene Buddhas and wrathy temple guards, and they are delightful.

THE ARTS OF ASSYRIA, by André Parrot (383 pp.; Golden Press; $25). The extraordinary book-by-book progress through the history of art, proposed by France’s Minister of Culture André Malraux and begun this year in the superb volume Sumer: The Dawn of Art (TIME, June 2), is continued with an equally lavish book on Assyria. The grim, skilled art of the warrior peoples who fought in the Mesopotamian valleys—it includes magnificent lion hunts as well as gloomy strings of captives—has never been presented better. Familiar bas-reliefs are well done in black and white, and quite unfamiliar wall paintings are reproduced, for the first time in any book, in excellent color. The moody, beautifully tinted paintings were discovered and copied by a French expedition in 1929.

THE SHIP, by Björn Landström (309 pp.; Doubleday; $14.95). For most boys and a few fortunate men, among life’s compelling questions are the position of the guns of Nelson’s Victory, the difference between a galleon and a galeass, and the vexing matter of how oars were banked on biremes. With authoritative information or thoughtful supposition, Author Landström deals with such matters in a magnificent history of man’s water conveyances, from the dugout to the nuclear submarine. The handsome sectional and perspective drawings are his own.

PICASSO’S PICASSOS, with text and photographs by David Douglas Duncan (270 pp.; Harper; $24.95). Art’s most illustrious living grandee has permitted Photographer Duncan, a friend and worshiper, to photograph some 500 paintings, drawings and collages that he keeps in his villa on the French Riviera. From this treasure trove, Duncan photographed 103 in color. His text conveys a sense of intimacy, largely by the “I said to Picasso” method.

A DICTIONARY OF SLANG AND UNCONVENTIONAL ENGLISH, by Eric Partridge (1,362 pp.; Macmillan; $16). The fifth edition of this highly regarded work is considerably enlarged, and an even greater delight to logomaniacs than the first four. Lexicographer Partridge pads resolutely after creeping neologism, and one finds that since 1920 “without a mintie” has been Australian sporting slang for penniless, and that “boat race” is current Cockney rhyming slang for face. There is no end to this; it is ceaselessly fascinating to learn that between 1780 and 1830, “to dance the Paddington frisk” meant to be hanged, that “painted mischief” is an obsolete term for playing cards, and that “paff!” is a contemptuous colloquial interjection, no longer used.

BEETLES, by Ewald Reitter (205 pp.; Putnam; $20). The season’s most beautifully photographed gift book is also the crawliest, and while there are doubtless many givees who will not be able to put it down, there are a good many more who will not be able to pick it up. But for amateur entomologists who can agree with the author that the Xixuthrus Heros Heer, a 5-in. pincher from the Fiji Islands, is handsome, the book could not be better.

THE ROMANCE OF TRISTAN AND ISEULT, retold by Joseph Bédier; translated from the French by Hilaire Belloc and Paul Rosenfeld; illustrated by Serge Ivanoff (172 pp.; Heritage; $6). If 13-year-old girls still come in the shy, quiet variety, this prettily done-up edition of the old Celtic tale should be an ideal present. It is full of sadness and magic, and it rings (as Padraic Colum observes in his introduction ) with the voice of the singer and the sound of the harp.

ALEXANDER WILSON, by Robert Cantwell (318 pp.; Lippincott; $ 15). Wilson, a turbulent and visionary Scot, was the first of America’s great painters of birds. He reached the colonies in 1794, explored great reaches of wilderness, and used the sketches and notes he brought back for a monumental work, American Ornithology. Author Cantwell’s biography is a work of skill and love. The book is handsomely laid out, and illustrated in color with eight of Wilson’s bird drawings.

MARTYN GREEN’S TREASURY OF GILBERT & SULLIVAN (717 pp.; Simon & Schuster; $ 15). A boon to bathtub bassos of willing voice and weak memory: the complete librettos, with piano arrangements, of eleven of the best G & S operettas. With charming illustrations by Gilbert and annoying sketches by a modern artist, Lucille Corcos.

GREAT HOUSES OF EUROPE, edited by Sacheverell Sitwell (318 pp.; Putnam; $19.95). All the sensations of aching feet and glazed eyes without leaving one’s armchair: a photographic tour of Schlösser, villas and palaces, both grand and ghastly, built in the golden years of conspicuous consumption when the only foundations established by the rich were those intended to support their gilded dwellings.

THE MODERNS, by Gaston Diehl (219 pp.; Crown; $10). Another survey of modern painting, with the usual fine color plates and the customary inescapable fault: such a book, of course, will be leafed through oftener than it is read, and leafing through a collection containing one Klee, one Dali, one Pollock, and so on, can lead only to ocular indigestion.

ORESTES OR THE ART OF SMILING, by Domenico Gnoli (71 pp.; Simon & Schuster; $6.95). Domenico Gnoli is an artist whose pen drawings for his charming fable (about a prince who did not know how to smile) remind one a little of Cruikshank’s, and a lot of Domenico Gnoli’s. The book is for children and wise adults.

THE BEST REMAINING SEATS, by Ben Hall (266 pp.; Potter; $12.50), recalls the vanishing glories of the movie palaces of the 1920s and ’30s. If you did not like the movie, you could soak up culture in the lobby looking at the statues. You could buy popcorn under a 40-ft. ceiling, or slump in a lounge that made the baths of Caracalla look like a bird-feeding station. The oldtime movie palaces were (and in some glorious cases still are) the grandest, most begilt structures—inside, at least—ever plastered together; here pictures and text combine for a properly sentimental obituary.

The following is a partial list of recent books issued by TIME Inc.

THE SPORTS ILLUSTRATED BOOK OF BRIDGE, by Charles Goren; illustrated; $12.50.

THE LIFE TREASURY OF AMERICAN FOLKLORE; illustrated; $12.50.

THE EPIC OF MAN, by the editors of LIFE; illustrated; $11.50.

LIFE PICTORIAL ATLAS OF THE WORLD, by the editors of LIFE and Rand McNally; 600 pp.; illustrated; $30.

From the LIFE World Library series (by mail order only; $2.95 a book): MEXICO, by William Weber Johnson; GERMANY, by Terence Prittie; and INDIA, by Joe David Brown.

From the LIFE Nature Library series (by mail order only; $3.95 a book): THE FOREST, by Peter Farb; THE SEA, by Leonard Engel; and THE DESERT, by A. Starker Leopold.