The “Native universe” could describe the whole of the Americas and Caribbean, as well as the varied, mysterious and complex societies of Native peoples. Native Universe: Voices of Indian America is the inaugural book of the new National Museum of the American Indian at the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C. The book provides a fascinating overview of Native American history and traditions and presents perspectives on the role of Native people in current society by Indian tribal leaders, writers, scholars, poets and storytellers. Native Universe is packed with stunning pictures of ancient clothing, tools and artifacts that accompany numerous essays on rituals, beliefs, cultural milestones and how they all connect to modern Native American life. Among the subjects covered are: the “accidental” gift of horses descended from mounts of Spanish colonial soldiers, which became a “profound agent of change” for Native peoples; “This Land Belongs to Us,” the brief and heartbreaking statement of Lakota chief Sitting Bull in 1882 before the Battle of the Little Big Horn; documents and pictures from a revisit of Wounded Knee during the 1970s Indian movement; a discussion of the war bonnet, a symbol appropriated by American popular culture; and the ancient warrior culture exemplified in modern times by Hopi tribal member Lori Ann Piestewa, who lost her life in the Iraq War.

Deanna Larson is a writer in Nashville.

The appeal of a book like Bound for Glory: America in Color 1939-43 is that it can literally change our view of history. New Deal photographers working under the auspices of the Farm Security Administration began chronicling the country in color with the advent of Kodak’s Kodachrome film in the mid-1930s. Depicting ordinary Americans many of them living hardscrabble lives in the country’s rural areas the images in this book are breathtaking both for their brilliant color and their rareness. Women wear vivid plaids and florals and landscapes are in rich greens and placid blues. We see street corners and swimming holes, country fairs and dining tables, as well as big-city life in Chicago and Washington, D.C. After the start of World War II, the FSA became part of the Office of War Information; the change is obvious as the photographs begin to resemble war posters picturing men and women, factories and trains all co-opted into the war effort. Still, the faces of the men, women and children taken before the economic boom are the most striking. As author Paul Hendrickson writes, quoting an old folk song, one can’t help wondering “whatever happened to the faces in the old photographs?”

From 1863 to 1874, Room M, the infamous gallery in the annual, government-sponsored Paris Salon (the Exhibition of Living Artists ), was a testing ground. It saw many a melee, showcasing (alphabetically) the dramatically opposed works of celebrated conservative painter Jean-Louis-Ernest Meissonier and reviled upstart Edouard Manet, father of the Impressionists. This juxtaposition of Meissonier’s realistically rendered historical scenes ( Campaign of France ) and Manet’s technically unorthodox, wittily subversive subjects ( Le Bain, Olympia ) represents the conceit a pivotal clash of ideas, commingled with the inevitable vicissitudes of human striving upon which Ross King’s The Judgment of Paris: The Revolutionary Era That Gave the World Impressionism is based.

As in King’s previous books (Brunelleschi’s Dome, Michelangelo and the Pope’s Ceiling) a curtain is lifted, exposing the lives and careers of formidable artists. Against a 19th-century decade of global war, civil unrest and oppressive politics, he weaves a rich tapestry of storytelling and history, a strategically paced, detail-packed narrative that follows the fortunes of Meissonier and Manet, the City of Light and the world’s nations. The turbulent chronicles of Napoleon III’s Second Empire unfold as, in both the Salons proper and their illegitimate offspring, the Salons des Refuses, the artistic and public communities staged parallel battles of mores and tastes.

The Judgment of Paris is a marvelous biography (you’ll also meet Monet, Baudelaire and Zola), an art and military history and a study in the evolution of man’s cultural ideals. It underscores a rueful irony: man struggles for freedom of expression in the present, which is mined, always, from the past. Though Meissonier’s sought-after paintings of a bygone age, speaking a language of gentle nostalgia, were eventually deemed irrelevant, Manet’s shocking works, relevant depictions of modern life, now resonate with nostalgic vernacular. Says King, The painters of modern life created, in the end, the same consoling visions of the past.

Yet another volume distinguished by marvelous photography is Porsche 911: Perfection by Design. Car historian Randy Leffingwell provides the ample text, but he also shares the photo-taking duties with David Newhardt. The result is around 300 color and black-and-white shots of this hot-blooded Porsche sports car, from the early forerunners that first appeared in the 1950s, to the beginning of its distinctively long 40-year run in the 1960s (with the Type 901), on to the present 2005 models. Leffingwell’s words provide the inside scoop on the vision behind the inspired aesthetic and technical design of the 911, drawing upon interviews with dozens of Porsche engineers and executives as well as competitors who were admittedly influenced by the automobile’s powerful, sleek image and its nonpareil manual-shift high performance. Casual car buffs might get a little daunted by Leffingwell’s discussion of things like digital engine management systems, while full-blown gearheads will be solidly engaged. But everyone will revel in the views of the various incarnations of this incredibly stylish car through the decades, distinguished by subtle, tasteful body tweaks and carefully thought-out mechanical enhancements, resulting in ultra-cool specific models such as the Turbo, the Carrera, the Cabriolet and the Speedster, many produced in limited editions and carrying price tags of upwards of $200,000. If you could afford one, you’d surely buy it, and this gorgeous volume shows why.

Martin Brady is making out his Christmas list at home in Nashville.

The photographer’s lens magnifies both personality and era, the seen and unseen. Richard Avedon, staff photographer for Harper’s Bazaar, Vogue and The New Yorker, was one of the most influential photographers of the 20th century, famous for his revealing portraits of women. About 125 tritone and color photographs shot during his decades-long career are compiled in Woman in the Mirror 1945-2004. Avedon redefined the fashion photograph, making clothes another prop in his layered, staged scenarios where even the flare of a tulle skirt acted as punctuation. His photographs of fashion models in the ’40s and ’50s embody that formal and glamorous sartorial age in highly dramatic scenes mixing high and low, like his picture of a model clad in Balenciaga standing in a brick-lined alley in Le Marais, Paris, as acrobats perform tricks above her well-coiffed head. His portraits during the ’60s (Janis Joplin, Brigitte Bardot, Claude and Paloma Picasso), ’70s and ’80s (fashion editor Polly Mellen in a too-tight skirt, the writer Marguerite Duras shrugging in ankle boots and a lumberjack shirt) continued to capture women ever more candidly at the intersection of fascinating and dangerous. That mood is summed up by a shot of leggy model Stephanie Seymour caught in mid-fall off high heels and still luminous in a Karl Lagerfeld dress for Chanel in a moment that surely broke a bone.

Photography is an amazing thing. It takes a real-time moment and captures it in a two-dimensional image we can look at again and again. It is the chronicle of a split second that contains all the history that went before it and all the history that has come after it. And of course, certain photographic images have the ability to burn into our imaginations, transform our individual and collective psyches and become part of our makeup. Who can forget seeing the Earth photographed for the first time from space, or the image of President Kennedy riding confidently in the open motorcar? Here are four books packed with stunning photographs that will sit handsomely and disarmingly on a coffee table until someone opens them, beholds their pages and unleashes their latent power.

A provocative retrospective of the last half-century, Harry Benson: Fifty Years in Pictures by Harry Benson, gives insight into the renowned photographer’s world. A gutsy, tenacious and award-winning photojournalist, Benson’s career includes numerous covers for magazines such as Life, People and Vanity Fair. Here are portraits of the people who once captured the headlines the Beatles, the presidents, sports figures like Cassius Clay (Muhammad Ali) and a young O.J. Simpson images sure to evoke a mixture of emotions, from joy and angst to nostalgia. One of the more poignant photographs is Benson’s shot of President Nixon giving his farewell speech to his Cabinet and White House staff. The anguished faces of his wife and children as they stand loyally by his side speak as eloquently about that agonizing moment as any prose document could. Benson’s first-hand captions and behind-the-scenes stories add an exciting element to the visual chronicles. If there’s a historian, "culture-as-art" buff or budding photojournalist in your life, Benson’s book would be a wonderful inspiration. Another career spanning 50 years is celebrated in Ansel Adams at 100 by John Szarkowski, which marks the 100th anniversary of the birth of one of America’s foremost landscape photographers. Szarkowski, director of the Centennial Exhibition of Adams’ work, (which will be on tour through fall 2003) has chosen 114 of the artist’s characteristically striking black and white landscape photographs, in which, as he puts it, "each element is articulated with perfect precision." Ansel Adams is best known for his photos of Yosemite National Park, the California coast and other wilderness areas of the American West and this hefty volume contains many of his signature prints. A master at conveying both the enormous grandeur and the fragile details of a landscape, Adams had a tremendous impact not only on the art world, but on the environmental movement as well. For black and white film aficionados or nature lovers, this book is a treasure, and it even includes a reproduction print, suitable for framing a gift within a gift! Allowing nature to be its own best advocate is also the idea behind Remains of a Rainbow: Rare Plants and Animals of Hawaii by David Liittschwager and Susan Middleton. Liittschwager and Middleton have been photographing endangered animals and plants since 1986, but this volume is the result of a four-year collaborative effort dedicated to the ecosystem of Hawaii. Many of the state’s endangered flora and fauna species are so rare they do not exist anywhere else on earth. The authors have showcased 142 of these singular species in exquisite, individual photos to accentuate the magnificence of each and bring attention to the tragedy of declining biodiversity on the island and in the world at large. What at first seems just a lovely picture book of exotic plants and animals is also an urgent exhortation to save one of the richest natural environments on the planet. This book is a call to action; seeing these photos is sure to evoke a response in even the most unwilling environmentalist.

And for the environmentalist who doesn’t need much prodding, consider a beautiful new version of A Sand County Almanac by Aldo Leopold, with photographs by Michael Sewell. Leopold’s Almanac is a classic of nature writing that should be on the main shelf of any environmentalist’s library, right next to Thoreau’s Walden and Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring.

First published in 1949, a year after the author’s death, the Almanac takes readers on a seasonal journey as Leopold works to restore the land at his small homestead in Sand County, Wisconsin. In this new edition, Sewell’s photography illustrates the time-honored text with splendid color photographs taken on location at Leopold’s property. This is a great book to read snuggled under a blanket (treat yourself!) or to give to anyone on your list who could use a closer communication with the natural world.

Linda Stankard is a writer in Cookeville, Tennessee.