HOT TYPE ELISSA SCHAPPELL

Baby, it's cold outside. Liberate your lederhosen and strap on a wine sack! Nicholas and Nina Shoumatoff share their panoramic view of the most famous mountains in the world in The Alps (University of Michigan Press). Also this month: Eric Myers's Uncle Mame (St. Martin's) raises a glass to Patrick Dennis, the divine social satirist who introduced America to Auntie Mame and the sophisticated camp aesthetic. Starryeyed brides will be swept off their feet by Letitia Baldrige's Legendary Brides (HarperCollins). Ron Insana insists one can predict the course of world events by paying heed to The Message of the Markets (HarperCollins). A granddaughter discovers she isn't her grandmother's only living relative in wicked, wicked Fay Weldon's comic novel Rhode Island Blues (Atlantic Monthly Press). Graduate from that postcard of Michelangelo's David to 5,000 years of stone-cold sexy Nude Sculpture (Abrams)—David Finn's erotic snaps allow one to leer in private, while Vicki Goldberg's commentary makes it seem almost educational. Arise from your Barcaloungers, jaded boomers—fellow midlifer and spiritual seeker Bill McKibben takes on the challenge of becoming a world-class skier in Long Distance (Simon & Schuster). At last, Nan Kempner is here to save you from the embarrassment of serving foreign diplomats and heiresses salami cornets and chicken-liver footballs with RSVP: the architect reveals his dramatic piano designs inspired by operas such as Carmen and L~znstein on the Beach. In Robert Tracy's Spaces of Mind (Limelight Editions), Isamu Noguchi's as tonishing set designs are brought to life in the theater of dance. Study the pores of the stars in Sharp (Powerhouse), which features Nigel Parry's very-up-close-and-personal photographs. If there was a conservation agency devoted to saving the endangered nun, Lucy Kaylin's For the Love of God (Morrow)-a study of nuns in their mysterious and diminishing habitats-would be its calling card. The Alan Siegel photography collection shares the wealth in One Man's Eye (Abrams), featuring masterworks by such artists as Diane Arbus, Irving Penn, and Edward Weston. Eiko on Stage (Callaway) assembles 20 years of Oscar winner Eiko Ishioka's extraordinary film design. Author Willie Morris, much-loved son of the South, collaborated with his photographer ( son, David Rae Morris, to create his final book, My Mississippi (University Press of Mississippi). Va-va-va-vroom-a hundred-hooter salute for Dewey Nicks's Kustom, a photo explosion of the fast lane, sporting hot wheels, hot ice, and babes, babes, babes. And Robert Gottlieb and Robert Kimball's sparklingly entertaining Reading Lyrics (Pantheon) exalts the lyrical sublimity of such cunning word smiths as Porter, Gershwin, and Coward. Ev'ry time we say goodbye, I die a little.