Despite the evident fact that most people have birthdays at about the same rate they have Christmases, publishers hesitate to issue expensive, elaborate books except in the jolly season, when the expense is less important than the solution of what to give Aunt Lucy. Those that do come out in other seasons must offer unusual promise. Among spring and summer's most unusual and promising:
MICHELANGELO THE PAINTER by Valeria Mariani. 151 pages, 86 color plates. Kimberly Dormann. For properly patriotic Italians, 1964 is the 400th anniversary not of the birth of Shakespeare but of...