Annie Leibovitz has photographed some of the most famous faces of our time, creating iconic portraits in her work for Rolling Stone, Vanity Fair, Gap, American Express and others. The images in A Photographer’s Life, 1990-2005 go from color to black-and-white, landscape to portraiture, artists (Baryshnikov, Welty, Avedon) to revolutionaries (Mandela, Bill Gates), Hollywood to war-torn Sarajevo. Leibovitz makes frequent use of four-panel spreads, especially when documenting her family. Sometimes, however, one photograph is enough: waves crashing into the Havana shore; Philip Johnson at his Glass House; a portrait of Susan Sontag, Leibovitz’s companion, with cropped white hair melting into a thick black turtleneck. Intimate photos of Sontag working, breakfasting in Venice, coping with and finally succumbing to cancer punctuate the years chronicled in A Photographer’s Life.

A companion exhibition to the book opened at the Brooklyn Museum in October and a documentary about Leibovitz (directed by her sister Barbara) will air on PBS’ American Masters series in January. After emotionally draining years during which Leibovitz lost both her father and Sontag and then celebrated the birth of twins, it’s a particularly apt time for a retrospective of her life and career.

The vast spaces and close confines of the Grand Canyon, from rim to canyon floor, are given their due in Lasting Light: 125 Years of Grand Canyon Photography. This book, made all the more beautiful by author Stephen Trimble’s words, is an homage complet to a much-loved space one that is imperiled by an excess of visitation and environmental pollution.

The Grand Canyon has been explored and photographed since the mid-19th century. Lasting Light faithfully chronicles the photographers, their photographic technologies and their artistic visions from the early expeditionary years to the middle, more iconic (in terms of photographic innovation) times, through to the large field of contemporary photographers still mesmerized by this mysterious and challenging geography. From the Kolb Brothers to Eliot Porter to Jack Dykinga, each photographer and their unique interpretation of the canyon’s features are included. This collection is a superlative explication of America’s very own world wonder. Alison Hood was formerly a National Park Service Ranger at Muir Woods and the Golden Gate National Recreation Area.

Frenchman and award-winning photographer Philippe Bourseiller explored many of America’s famous and lesser known national and state parks for an entire year. The result, America’s Parks, is a heady and dramatic volume of his photographs, bookended by a triad of provocative essays (two by fellow countrymen, one by an American), that give both European and American perspectives on the origins, history and development of America’s parks, as well as a thought-provoking look at the future of national parks worldwide.

The photography in America’s Parks is almost over the top; photographic artistry, in the form of extreme technical manipulation, reigns supreme in this collection. We see mind-blowing sunsets, almost unreal close-ups of flowers in a cracked desert and the minute gradations of feathered texture found in a bird’s wing. While Bourseiller’s photographs are masterful, they are not fully representative of the parks they are supposed to depict; Niagara Falls is given short shrift, shown in a single photo of powerfully flowing waters, with no background perspective or setting. Bourseiller’s work, though beautiful, is somewhat inaccessible: there is no elucidation of his motivation and vision, and his photos are not captioned; the reader must take their location and meaning from an appendix that gives a general description of the park in which they were shot.

Alison Hood was formerly a National Park Service Ranger at Muir Woods and the Golden Gate National Recreation Area.

Galen Rowell: A Retrospective is a loving tribute compiled by Sierra Club editors a grand collection of Rowell’s exquisite images, accompanied by nine thoughtful essays and short remembrances written by friends, family and colleagues. According to colleague Frans Lanting, Rowell was a photographic pioneer, ever searching to capture the dynamic landscape. Says Lanting, What this meant to Galen personally was: Travel light, anticipate opportunities, shoot fast, keep moving, and enjoy yourself. Alison Hood was formerly a National Park Service Ranger at Muir Woods and the Golden Gate National Recreation Area.

Would you like to delight your resident horse-lover this Christmas with something other than another item from her State Line Tack wish list? Widely acclaimed photographer Yann Arthus-Bertrand has culled 15 years of pictures and selected his favorites for a new collection, Horses. From the lens of a master who is at ease whether working from a bird’s-eye view or up close in the studio, these pictures convey a depth that is rarely seen in standard horse photography. Focusing on the complex relationship between his equine subjects and their caretakers, Arthus-Bertrand’s photographs reveal almost as much about horse-lovers as they do about the horses themselves.

Starting with photos taken in Eurasia, where the horse’s ancestors developed into the present day species Equus, representatives of many breeds are shown against the backdrop of Arthus-Bertrand’s signature brown tarp canvas. Befitting an artist who has spent a significant portion of his career photographing the earth from the air, Arthus-Bertrand includes several beautifully composed shots in which the canvas is a small element of a wider, lush scene. Thoughtful commentary by Jean-Louis Gouraud enhances the photos and focuses on how the various breeds have evolved in response to regional cultures. This armchair tour of the horse world is a captivating journey.

In Astronomy: A Visual Guide, British science writer Mark A. Garlick offers us the reassuring news that the sun has enough fuel to last another 5,000 to 8,500 million years. Of course, this is but one little info bite in his fact- and theory-packed, visually stimulating excursion through the night skies. Garlick first takes readers through humankind’s historical fascination with space, with quick-take lists and chronological rundowns concerning archaeoastronomy, early and later astronomical tools, the scientific discoveries of Copernicus, Galileo and others, manned spacecraft, space disasters and the various unmanned probes that have been charting deep space for the past 30 years. The heart of the book is a star-gazer’s wonderland, offering a trove of hard data and interesting speculation on the Solar System, stars and galaxies, and the further reaches of the as-yet-unknown universe. Despite some spotted typographical errors, the text is otherwise eminently readable. But best of all are the stunning photos, taken from the world’s important observatories and from space-based cameras. Attractive and imaginative artist’s renderings, including star maps, fill out this intriguing astronomical tour.

Even if we allow New Yorkers a little slack for their endearing nearsightedness, we’d probably have to admit some truth to their contention that Madison Square Garden is the world’s most famous arena. George Kalinsky has been the Garden’s official photographer since 1966, and his nearly 40 years of work are the basis for Garden of Dreams: Madison Square Garden 125 Years, which uses stirring pictures to tell a story of international sports, politics, entertainment and celebrity. The volume benefits from a terrific introduction by journalist Pete Hamill, who takes the Garden through its various structural and site changes since the 19th century, complete with illustrative anecdotes that capture the distinctively New York mindset. Other brief essays are contributed by personalities for whom the Garden brings fond memories, including Bill Cosby, John McEnroe, Bill Bradley, Robert Klein and Spike Lee. Kalinsky’s photos supplemented by some black-and-white archival shots are by turns colorful and fraught with history. Subjects include New York Knicks basketball greats, world-class animal tamer Gunther Gebel-Williams, Muhammad Ali, Nadia Comaneci, Pope John Paul II, Peggy Fleming and Clinton/Gore together at the 1992 Democratic Convention.