Imagine reading an issue of BookPage—in fact, reading all the books reviewed—in a volume the size of a matchbox. Then imagine reading even tinier illustrated books—not just the best-known poems of Shakespeare, but his entire folio. Now imagine reading something so small that it requires a microscope.

Simon Garfield, whose previous book explored the creation and variety of movable type fonts, turns his relaxed, fireside-chatty tone (and a sprinkling of puns) to the human fascination with not size, but scale. In Miniature: How Small Things Illuminate the World is a charming collage of historical vignettes and commentary, wandering from tiny volumes and flea circuses to miniature railroads, both the hugely commercial layouts and the private escapes of such enthusiasts as Rod Stewart, Neil Young and Roger Daltrey (rock stars and railroading—who knew?).

Model villages—and the single-minded artists who created them—are monuments to imagination (Chinese human hair is used for roof thatching) and sheer doggedness (a one-inch clematis vine features 201 minuscule leaves). A photo of then-Princess Elizabeth towering over her future domain at Bekonscot Model Village is oddly gripping—her face is presciently grave, as war has not come to either Bekonscot or Britain.

Garfield has a particular fascination with the Eiffel Tower, which appears throughout the book in various forms and sizes, from a man-size toothpick model and the half-sized tower in Las Vegas to the merely 76-foot version in Walt Disney World, plus dozens of others around the globe. They are designed to, as Garfield puts it, “shrink the world.” But while the 1889 view from nearly 1,000 feet up gave some visitors an almost celestial vision of the city of boulevards and cathedrals, others found their own “shrinking” somewhat disorienting. Art critic Robert Hughes compared the experience to the first view of Earth from the moon, but do we become greater or tinier? Is that an issue of size, or of scale?

And is there a reason why the pharaohs of ancient Egypt buried hundreds of miniature statuettes in their tombs to serve them in the afterlife, while the Emperor Qin had more than 8,000 life-size warriors and cavalry buried in his? Conviction or mere convenience? Weigh that on your philosophical scale.

If you imagined Claude Monet at work on his late masterpieces, the Water Lilies, you might picture him seated in his garden in Giverny, France, placidly dabbing blues and purples onto canvas, capturing watery impressions with ease. The portrait that Ross King offers in Mad Enchantment is far more complicated. In 1914, Monet was 73 and the world’s highest-paid artist. He’d already spent several years painting views of his pond, but now he envisioned a grouping of massive canvases that would evoke a “watery aquarium.” It took him the rest of his life.

King, the author of Brunelleschi’s Dome and The Judgment of Paris, has done his research—the book contains 40 pages of endnotes—but he spins a readable narrative. Mad Enchantment tells the story of Monet’s efforts to bring his vision to reality, even as the Great War and all its privations interrupted. King details Monet’s struggles, how he approached technical concerns such as displaying the enormous canvases in an oval gallery, and how he coped as his “prodigious” eyes began to fail. And contrary to popular belief (and Monet’s claims), he didn’t just dash off his paintings en plein air—he reworked them at length in his studio, often adding layers of paint.

This is also the story of Monet’s enduring friendship with Georges Clemenceau, who led France in the Great War. It was Clemenceau who persuaded Monet to donate his unfinished Water Lilies to France and to complete them (and to stop being a pain in the behind about it, as Clemenceau termed it). King uses the lens of this friendship to show Monet’s often-cantankerous personality (“frightful old hedgehog,” Clemenceau called him) as well as his abiding love for his family and friends.

This article was originally published in the September 2016 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

The sense that something purchased cheaply at an auction may turn out to be priceless treasure did not originate with “Antiques Roadshow.” Consider the case of John Snare, an English bookseller who picked up a painting of King Charles I that raised more questions than he could readily answer. The Vanishing Velázquez: A 19th Century Bookseller's Obsession with a Lost Masterpiece merges history and mystery, obsession and deception, yet views the works in question with a clear and illuminating eye.

Author and Observer art critic Laura Cumming (A Face to the World) traces Snare's lifelong obsession with and devotion to his painting, which he believed to be the work of Diego Velázquez, and which ultimately led him to ruin before he was able to definitively confirm its provenance. Snare was alternately derided as a lunatic and thought of as a visionary, and the painting changes hands so many times it can be hard for readers to keep track of its whereabouts.

Cumming also sketches the artist's life and work—Velázquez is notable for a tender and affectionate view of his subjects—in language that brings each portrait to life. Though Velázquez is compared to Shakespeare because so little is known of his actual life, Cumming finds that we are able to deduce much from the artist’s subject matter and the way he portrayed himself, "to know (him) through his work."

While Snare and Velázquez are both somewhat hard to trace, the details unearthed here are rich ones; Snare's bookshop and printing business are vividly evoked, and his journey to America and time in New York's burgeoning art world are a bold adventure. Still, we are left to wonder, what of the family he left behind? The Vanishing Velázquez offers a penetrating look at art and the lengths to which it can move the human heart.