GIFTS IN PRINT

A page from A Toute Epreuve (Braziller, $75), a handsomely encased selection of woodcuts by Joan Miro illustrating the poems of French surrealist Paul Eluard.

They're big and beautiful. Some call them coffee-table books. We call them pretty nice gifts. On this page and on those that follow, our pick of some of the season's best.

COSMIC DALI

As the ultimate surrealist, Salvador Dali deserves the ultimate treatment, and in Dali: The Work, The Man (Abrams, $145) he gets it. This season's heavyweight art book, it contains more than a thousand illustrations and a detailed analysis of his life and work by Robert Descharnes.

POT SHOTS

Within the Underworld Sky: Mimbres Ceramic Art in Context (Twelvetrees, $40), by Barbara L. Moulard, unravels the secrets of the Mimbres—who peopled the American Southwest one thousand years ago— through the striking pottery they left behind. More than one hundred gravure plates of their masterworks are included in this handsome volume.

NOT NECESSARILY FOR CHILDREN

Lewis Carroll: Photos and Letters to His Child Friends ($150), edited by Guido Almansi, is published by Franco Maria Ricci. Carroll’s letters combine charming nonsense and sly seduction with photographs of Alices through the camera lens.

PENN ESSENCE

Truman Capote, New York, 1948, one of the unforgettable images in Irving Penn (Museum of Modern Art/New York Graphic Society Books, $60), a definitive portfolio of the master photographer’s work, with an introduction by John Szarkowski.

GIFTS IN PRINT

ARTS FAIR RECOMMENDS...

For those who like the past in the present:

“Primitivism" in 20th Century Art: Affinity of the Tribal and the Modern, edited by William Rubin (Museum of Modern Art/New York Graphic Society Books; two volumes, $80).

For the defiantly untrendy: American Impressionism, by William H. Gerdts (Abbeville, $85), and Victorian Painters, by Jeremy Maas (Abbeville, $49.95).

For nostalgists—nobody does it better than Norman: The Advertising World of Norman Rockwell, by Dr. Donald R Stoltz, Marshall L. Stoltz, and William F. Earle (Robert Silver Associates/Madison Square Press, $39.95).

For Botero-esque bloaters: Botero, by Pierre Restany (Abrams, $55, or limited deluxe edition, $1,250).

For Bellini-cocktail lovers: Jacopo Bellini: The Louvre Album of Drawings, with an introduction by Bernhard Degenhart and Annegrit Schmitt (Braziller, $80).

Ask your rich uncle for Georgia O'Keeffe: The Artist’s Landscape, with photographs by Todd Webb (Twelvetrees; limited boxed edition, $750—or settle happily for the first edition, $45).

Ask anyone for Matisse, by Pierre Schneider (Rizzoli, $95).