GIFT BOOKS | Some suggestions for under the tree

Gift books tend to be back-strainers and wrist-wrenchers, but don't judge a book by its tonnage. The following hefty volumes selected by Charles Matthews of Knight Ridder may put a dent in the coffee table, but they also offer text and pictures that enlighten and enchant.
THE YEAR'S TOP GIFT BOOKS
I wanted to pick out a surefire gift book, one so irresistible that you could give it to almost anybody on your list and be greeted with cries of delight. But I couldn't decide between these two. Both are full of wonders, so I leave it to you to decide which will more delight the person on the receiving end.
U The New Yorker cartoon has been one of the essential records of the Zeitgeist, from 1925, when the jokes were about speakeasies and the Scopes trial, to 2004, when the jokes were about cyberporn and souped-up cell phones. (Guy on street: "Can you hang on a sec? I just took another picture of my ear.") "The Complete Cartoons of the New Yorker" (Black Dog & amp; Leventhal, 656 pp. plus 2 CDs, $60) reprints an enormous selection of cartoons, but all 68,647 cartoons that had appeared in the magazine by the time the book went to press are contained on the two CDs that come with the book. Yeah, it's a bit overwhelming, but in a seriously funny way.
U Less funny but just as overwhelming is the "National Geographic Atlas of the World, Eighth Edition" (National Geographic, 416 pp., $165). I admit that I have a thing for maps, but I don't see why anyone wouldn't, given the clarity and detail of the ones in this atlas. It also ventures into the extraterrestrial, with maps of the moon and Mars, as well as spreads devoted to the solar system, the Milky Way and the known universe. And the book takes us into cyberspace, too: Atlas owners are given a password that unlocks some nifty interactive maps and updates on the National Geographic Web site. To put it simply: wow.
FOR REAL READERS
The conventional sneer is that coffee-table books are for people who don't read. But here are two aimed at people who do.
U The homes of 21 writers, including Twain, Dickinson, Faulkner, Hemingway and Whitman, are featured in the handsome "American Writers at Home" (The Library of America, 224 pp., $50), with commentary by the poet J.D. McClatchy and eloquent photographs by Erica Lennard. There's also information on locations and visiting hours for the houses featured in the book.
U If there's a Conan Doyle devotee on your list, shop no more. "The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes" (Norton, 1878 pp. in two vols., $75) is an absolutely staggering compendium of Holmesiana, reprinting the texts of all the stories (a third volume, containing the novels, will be published next year) with learned marginalia that shed light on all the now-obscure Victorian allusions. Copiously illustrated.
FOR HISTORY BUFFS
U Those old cowhands sure did get gussied up. "Fine Art of the West" (Abbeville, 276 pp., $75) is a spectacular collection of artistry in leather, silver, steel, horsehair and felt: boots, saddles, spurs, chaps, whips, bridles, guns, holsters, belts and hats, from museums and collections of Western wear and gear. Among the handsomely photographed items: Ronald Reagan's Presidential Seal-embossed boots, and a surprisingly froufrou collection of boots owned by Gene Autry.
U With contributions by such prominent American Indian writers as Vine Deloria Jr., N. Scott Momaday, Sherman Alexie and Louise Erdrich, "Native Universe: Voices of Indian America" (National Geographic, 320 pp., $40) has more substance than many picture books. It was published in connection with the opening of the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian this year. Like the museum, the book is a tribute to native American cultures.
FOR NATURE LOVERS
U If you've been to that wonderful section of the Monterey Bay Aquarium where brightly colored jellyfish bob in eerie suspension, you'll be fascinated by some of the images in "Under Antarctic Ice: The Photographs of Norbert Wu" (California, 177 pp., $39.95). Braving the frigid waters under the ice of McMurdo Sound, Wu gives us images of giant jellyfish, anemones, starfish, nudibranchs, sea stars and other creatures, as well as whales and seals. There are also photographs of penguin colonies on the mainland. Another reminder that places some think of as wasteland are really vast ecological treasures.
U I was dazzled by a picture on Page 234 of "Earth From Space" (Firefly, 272 pp., $49.95) that looks a bit like an incredibly intricate patchwork quilt. But then I read the caption that explains that this was once a Bolivian forest that's been stripped for logging and ranching, and the beauty turned suddenly sour. Compiled by the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum from photographs taken by satellites, this extraordinarily eye-opening book explores natural and urban landscapes from a point of view that should make everyone worry about the fate of the planet.
U "The Encyclopedia of Animals: A Complete Visual Guide" (California, 608 pp., $39.95) is the kind of book you ought to give to someone with kids. Not that it isn't a book for grown-ups: It's a thoroughly documented reference book, surveying the animal kingdom from monotremes to echinoderms. But the photographs and illustrations in it are so flat-out beautiful, and the layout so cleanly informative, that I want the book to fall into the hands of someone young who will be fired with enthusiasm for preserving the rich variety of life -- so much of it terribly endangered -- presented here.
FOR BIG WHEELS
U These are cars. Not bloated, bullying SUVs, but swoopy, show-offy reminders of an age when even the family sedan had to look like it was ready to launch Flash Gordon on a flight to the planet Mongo. "Automobiles of the Chrome Age, 1946-1960" (Abrams, 270 pp., $50) took me back to the days of my childhood, when post-World War II optimism and burgeoning middle-class affluence had Detroit designers outdoing one another in ostentatiousness. Yes, these cars were terrible gas-guzzlers, but Michael Furman's photographs can make you fall in love with them anyway.
U Cubans have certainly fallen in love with them. After the embargo against the Castro regime began in 1961, no more new American cars were shipped to Cuba, but the pre-1960 cars that were on the island have been carefully maintained, according to "Chariots of Chrome: Classic American Cars of Cuba" (Boston Mills Press, 144 pp., $29.95). Author George Fischer calls the country "perhaps the world's largest living automotive museum," and Simon Bell's sweet, gorgeous and sometimes touching photographs of Cubans and their cars supports that thesis.
FOR DEVOTEES OF POPULAR CULTURE
U If you know someone whose passion is the classic Hollywood movies of the '30s, '40s and '50s, "In the Picture: Production Stills From the TCM Archives" (Chronicle Books, 160 pp., $35) is a perfect fit. These are on-the-set shots -- some candid, some obviously posed -- showing the director, the cameraman and the crew hovering as some memorable moments are being filmed: Fred Astaire dancing with Ginger Rogers in "Top Hat," Humphrey Bogart saying goodbye to Ingrid Bergman in "Casablanca," James Dean brooding in "Rebel Without a Cause," and so on. The contrast of glamour and grit in almost every still is remarkable.
U From Fredric March and Janet Gaynor to P. Diddy and J.Lo, "Oscar Night: 75 Years of Hollywood Parties" (Knopf, 384 pp., $75) is a survey of the glitterati at play. It's a collection of candid snapshots of the pretty people after the awards ceremony, eating, drinking, dancing and smoking -- though the cigarette smokers grow fewer (and more attitude-laden) as the years go on. There are some funny moments and some odd couplings -- Lee Iacocca and Anna Nicole Smith? -- captured here. Celebrity lovers will eat it up.
U A very blue eye gazes out from the otherwise black-and-white cover of "Sinatra" (DK Publishing, 360 pp., $40), which is crammed with all manner of information about the life and times of the most famous crooner ever to come out of Hoboken, N.J. There are complete playlists for all of Sinatra's albums, capsules on each of his movies, mini-bios of Rat Packers and rivals (Perry Como, Vic Damone, Frankie Laine, et al.), and hundreds of pictures. For Sinatra fans, obviously, but this would be a neat gift for anyone interested in American popular culture.
FOR THE SCIENTIFICALLY CURIOUS
U At Harvard, there's a huge, rambling, gloomy brick Victorian building that houses some of the oddest stuff in the world: tapeworms collected by a 19th-century Boston doctor from the intestines of his wealthy patients, Vladimir Nabokov's collection of butterfly genitalia, and a collection of flowers made out of glass that draws senior-citizen tour buses by the score. "The Rarest of the Rare: Stories Behind the Treasures at the Harvard Museum of Natural History" (HarperResource, 178 pp., $22.95) is a wonderful account of where this and a lot of other weird stuff (beautifully photographed -- even the tapeworms) came from, but also of its scientific and historical value.
U I grew up in the tornado alley of the Southeast and I've lived in blizzard-prone New England, so Bay Area weather has always struck me as pretty mild-mannered. But everyone talks about it anyway, so you probably know someone who'd love "Weather: A Visual Guide" (Firefly, 304 pp., $29.95), a profusely and often beautifully illustrated guide to all things meteorological.
JUST FOR LAUGHS
U I am a cat person, by which I mean a person to whom a cat usually deigns to be pleasant. We have occasional food bowl and litter box issues, but on the whole we get along well. So because I'm also the kind of person whom Roy Blount Jr.'s humor can reduce to helpless laughter, I liked "I Am the Cat, Don't Forget That" (HarperCollins, 105 pp., $19.95), a collection of cat photographs by Valerie Shaff with an introduction and captions in verse by Blount. Whenever Shaff's pictures verge on too-cuteness, Blount can be relied on to salt things up with a bit of feline attitude, as in: "Yes, I knocked over / The candelabrum / And now I'm on the sofa. / What is the problem?"