Gifts Between Covers

French holiday shoppers browsing in their bookstores can find an edition of Genesis bound in copper that rattles when shaken to simulate the sound of thunder. They can also buy the writings St. Francis of Assisi tied shut with a piece of twine reminiscent of a friar's cord; a war book, La Route des Flandres by Claude Simon, whose covers are shot through with bullets; and a book about the devil wrapped in old sermons and giving off clouds of powdered sulphur when its pages are turned. Such salesmanship (the work of France's thriving Christian Book Club) leaves U.S. publishers behind Along with a few gimmick books Christmas shoppers can find a remarkable collection of handsome volumes in which most of the bookmen's effort has gone into text and illustrations. Among them:

THE DISCOVERY OF THE WORLD, by Albert Bettex (379 pp: Simon & Schu ster: $17.50 deals quite magnificantly with the matter of its title. Here the great and minor explorers, from antiquity to the 20th century, pierce the curtains of the unknown on every continent and every sea. The text by Swiss Historian Bettex is both sound and readable, but the 300-odd illustrations are themselves a striking monument, probably unequaled in any other single volume in print to man's unquenchable curiosity about his world.

THE AMERICAN HERITAGE PICTURE HISTORY OF THE CIVIL WAR, narrative by

Bruce Catton(630 pp.; DDEG"Doubleday; $19.95), proves that on the steadily growing mountain of books about the Civil Har there is always room for another Bruce Cation's competent running narrative is not at the level of his earlier books. But the 836 illustrations--especially the stark, unsophisticated photographs by Brady and others--reach a new high point in dramatizing the nation's most dramatic war.

MOMENTS PRESERVED, by Irving Penn (183pp.;Simon & Schuster; $17.50) is the stunning work of a photographer who has a way with a face. There is little his camera does not do well--including daredevil riders in Morocco and somber still lifes of wine done for ads. But what Photographer Penn does best is to absorb the secrets of character into his lenses There is French Man-of-All-Letters Jean Cocteau, warily perching on a chair sharp-beaked and sharp-trousered his vest as loud as some of his poses; Bert Lahr, his big, kindly, sad-smiling features musing on a great clown's vision; a chip-on-shoulder but grinning Paris mailman looking as if he knew the secret of every letter in his bag.

ANTARCTICA, by Emil Schulthess (Simon & Schuster; $ 15), is the photographic record brought back by Swiss Cameraman Schulthess from the U.S. expedition at the South Pole during the Antarctic summer, 1958-59. In stunning pictures, Schulthess has caught the cryoramic immensity of the region. He can look at newly hatched penguins and their parents with the same authority that he brings to a view of the seemingly endless Ross Ice Shelf, or the overwhelming spectacle of an Antarctic sunset.

ARTHUR RACKHAM, His LIFE AND WORK by Derek Hudson (181 pp.; Scribner; $20), tells the story of the British insurance clerk who became one of the two or three finest illustrators of children's books. The biography is a loving quiet account of a quiet life, but the book's main distinction lies in the Rackham illustrations. Those for Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and The Wind in the Willows alone are enough to touch off shivers of nostalgia in all who knew them in childhood.

THE WONDERS of LIFE on EARTH, by the Editors of LIFE and Lincoln Barnett 300 pp.; $12.50), is an ambitious panorama of evolution. In hundreds of startling photographs and drawings, supported by a sound text, the history of bird fish, plant, insect and animal life is made exceptionally clear.

MARC CHAGALL DRAWINGS FOR THE BIBLE (Harcourt, Brace; $30), is a continuation of the artist's Biblical poem-without-words on which he has been engaged for more than 30 years. These drawings and lithographs have a power firmly rooted in a kind of sophisticated innocence. Marc Chagall takes the Old Testament literally, so that his Jewish inspiration seems sometimes to have been handed over to an unreconstructed Fundamentalist for execution. These powerful drawings are sensuous (Ruth in the Fields looks like a belly dancer) and sometimes terrible (Joel Kills Sisera), but always steeped in a mythical vision that has become the signature of Chagall.

THE LITHOGRAPHS OF CHAGALL (220 pp ; Braziller; $25), has 237 reproductions << of them in color, which probably bears out the publisher's claim that it is a definitive collection of the artist's lithographs. Since they date from 1922 to 1960, Marc Chagall's development becomes fascinatingly apparent. That he drew well from the start is evident from so simple a sketch as Woman Walking. But, typical of Chagall, it is not quite so simple as it might seem. The woman is leaning almost to the point of falling, and her hands are pressed together as in prayer. Behind her a house looms at the same tentative angle, and a tiny goat trots on her head. Almost 40 years later, The Eiffel Tower Lovers are seated on the back of a large fowl that holds a bouquet of flowers as it approaches the tower with a blazing red sun in the background. The man is dressed, the girl naked. Between these two pictures are evidences of a fantastic and fascinating artistic vision not always easy to define but always a joy to divine.

HUMMINGBIRDS, by Crawford H.Greenewalt (250 pp.; Doubleday; $22.50), may become a classic of natural history. Author Greenewalt, president of mighty E. I. du Pont de Nemours & Co., has written a monograph, understandable to laymen, on his hobby--hummingbirds. Greenewalt offers some intriguing hummingbird lore, including the fact that they are the only birds that can hover with body motionless, and the only ones that have a " 'reverse gear' which enables them to fly backwards as prettily and efficiently as they can forwards." What will most excite bird watchers as well as plain readers is the crisp, full-color photographs, the largest collection ever published, which catch the hummingbirds in dazzling flight.

PICASSO IN ANTIBES, by Dor de la Souchere (Pantheon; $20), would be impressive simply as one more proof of the artist's many-talented industry. From July to December 1946 he lived in the Chateau d'Antibes on the French Riviera, and left behind for the Picasso Museum no fewer than 175 works, paintings, ceramics and drawings done during that time. One hundred forty-eight of them are beautifully reproduced here, many in color, and even the least of them has the artist's mark plainly stamped on it. From the ceramics, especially the figures of women, there come wild exhalations of gravity, humor and feminine timelessness.

ENGLISH ABBEYS AND PRIORIES, by Olive Cook and Edwin Smith (Viking; $12), provides an opportunity for quiet armchair study of early English church architecture--Tintern Abbey, oddly alive in its decay; Croyland Abbey, with its giant, startling figure of Christ in Majesty; dramatic Whitby Abbey, whose "gradual disintegration has been the work of time alone." More than the church buildings of other countries, they suggest peace and sanctuary, though their history was frequently anything but peaceful.

CHINESE PAINTINGS, by James Cahill (211 pp.; World Publishing; $27.50), is a remarkably satisfying collection of Chinese art ranging from the 2nd to the 18th century. The earliest examples have, above all, a finish, grace and sophistication that make them a pleasure to the Western eye. There are charming scenes of horsemen in which the animals and riders seem at once in motion and delicately suspended, and a 13th century Knick-Knack Peddler has his wares inspected by moppets as obviously delighted as those of any other time or place.

THE GUTENBERG BIBLE FACSIMILE (2 vols.; 1,282 pp.; Pageant; $600 in regular edition, $750 leatherbound) is the first U.S. attempt at a faithful facsimile of the world's first printed book since it came off the press in Mainz, Germany in 1455. Of the 1,000 copies being produced, 996 will go on sale, with nearly 200 copies already spoken for. Twelve by 18 1/2 inches (the size of the original) and weighing 40 Ibs., the new Gutenberg is a formidable piece of bookmaking, has so far taken 19 craftsmen two years to print and bind.* Both the chief librarian of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the curator of the Rare Book Room of the New York Public Library vouch for the faithfulness of the reproduction. The large type is nobly archaic and grave, the Latin lettering remarkably clear. Some of the illuminated pages (the color was applied by hand in the originals) have a surprising look of gaiety, suggesting the pleasure the artists took in embellishing the Holy Book with birds, flowers and monkeys.

POMPEII AND HERCULANEUM, THE GLORY AND THE GRIEF, by Marcel Brion (237 pp.; Crown; $10), is a fresh and often vivid history of the two cities destroyed by the eruption of Vesuvius in A.D. 79. French Novelist Marcel Brion and Photographer Edwin Smith succeed in conveying their own fascination for their sometimes grisly subject. Brion's reconstruction of what life was like in Pompeii is rich in detail and enriched by his novelist's feeling for the drama of ordinary experience. Men and women candidly wrote what they thought of each other on public walls, e.g., a certain Livia to her Alexander: "What do I care if your health is good or bad? Do you think I would mind if you dropped dead tomorrow?" Along with chilling pictures of corpses in the dreadful attitudes of sudden death, the book also offers lovely frescoes showing gracious living circa the ist century.

-- PAINTINGS OF FRAGONARD, by Georges Wildenstem (339 pp.;Phaidon; $25), presents the work of the 18th century French painter with the lush handsomeness it needs. Fragonard today seems on the innocent side, and fierce critics might even call some of his pictures silly. His Washerwomen seem vapidly romantic, and his famed, slightly naughty The Swing--girl on high exposing too much leg, young man lying on the ground getting an eyeful--is less funny than coarse. Yet among these 377 illustrations there is rich evidence of a joy in painting that is often reward enough for the onlooker.

* A more constructive approach to the Gutenberg Bible than that of Rare Bookman Gabriel Wells, who in 1921 bought one, unbound it and sold individual pages at $150 apiece.

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