"MONUMENTAL PARIS" by Hervé Champollion and Aude de Tocqueville (218 color photos and six gatefolds, Vendome, $150)
Redesign your coffee table for this extraordinary tribute to the gardens, rooftops, shops, restaurants, churches, waterways and neoclassical architecture of the world's most beautiful city. Opening to more than 3 feet wide with six gatefolds, the book celebrates the moody beauty and grandeur of a city that has retained its human scale into the modern age. Paris is amazingly rich in ornament, statuary and grand vistas, all expertly photographed in perfect light in myriad seasons and times of day. De Tocqueville's excellent captions are wisely grouped at the end, leaving Champollion's pictures free to seduce the heart.
MARY ABBE
"MOBY-DICK IN PICTURES: ONE DRAWING FOR EVERY PAGE" by Matt Kish (Tin House, $39.95)
For the first half of the book, Matt Kish says, he identified with Ahab; for the second half, the whale. He first read "Moby-Dick" in an abridged, illustrated version as a child and it stuck with him; since then he has read the book a dozen times, and in 2009 he took on the monumental task of illustrating it. He chose one passage from each page and produced an accompanying illustration -- 552 of them, mostly ink and acrylic on found paper, because the type and diagrams of the found paper bleed through, hinting at "a greater complexity and hidden structure," like the novel itself. The result is a rather fascinating compendium -- not literal illustrations, but impressionistic collages and paintings that stir the imagination.
LAURIE HERTZEL
"THE CONFERENCE OF THE BIRDS" by Peter Sís (Penguin Press, $27.95)
In his first book for adults, Czech artist and writer Peter Sís has adapted and illustrated a 12th-century Sufi poem about a flock of birds searching for their king. Sís, a Caldecott medalist and a winner of the MacArthur Genius Award (among many honors), has produced an exquisite book with magical illustrations and a powerful message.
LAURIE HERTZEL
"PERSUASION, AN ANNOTATED EDITION" by Jane Austen, edited by Robert Morrison (Belknap Harvard, $35)
Does "Persuasion" need annotation? You'd think the legions of loyal Jane Austen fans could annotate all of her books in their sleep. But this is a lovely book, in which Morrison, of Queen's University, Ontario, gives us context, geography and history; defines some terms (sedan chair, dab-chick, blain), and admits what he doesn't know. ("Why does Mrs. Clay send Mr. Elliot to Union Street ... and what does this tell us about their relationship? Austen does not explain it.") This book is lavishly illustrated and includes, in an appendix, Austen's original ending. (When you read it, you'll be glad she rewrote it.)
LAURIE HERTZEL
