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American Indian Art by Norman Feder. 445 pages. Abrams. $35. A connoisseur's collection of Indian painting, weaving, carving and mask designs put together by the Denver Museum director responsible for the fine Indian art show now at Manhattan's Whitney Museum (TIME. Dec. 6). Amid a plethora of the overupholstered and overpriced, this book is a notable example of wampum well spent.
The Riddle of the Sands by Erskine Childers. 261 pages. Barre Press, Imprint Society. $35. Written in 1903, this is still the world's greatest sailing suspense tale. It makes the cruise of two Edwardian Englishmen in tidal waters around Germany as immediate and harrowing as last summer's cruise to Cuttyhunk. Any sailor who hasn't read the book should do so. Unhappily, this special edition is tarted up with Rorschach-like woodcut and wash color illustrations, thus sabotaging the realism of tidal charts, maps and seamanlike detail. Readers with unlimited budgets might consider tearing out the pictures and billing the Imprint Society for, say, $30.
The Lore of Flight. Edited by John W.R. Taylor. 430 pages. Tre Tryclcare and Time Life Books. $30. From Leonardo da Vinci's arm powered aircraft design to the last entry (Zurich airport) in the book's splendidly detailed Encyclopaedic Index, this is the literary package best calculated to keep air-minded readers desk or rug-bound for weeks. What sets the book apart is not only how much it has packed into reasonably small compass, but the precision and beauty of its illustrations, including galleries of great flying machines from then to now. $20 to $25
Masters of Naive Art by Oto Bihalji-Merin. 304 pages. McGraw-Hill. $25. This is not a case of over the river and through the trees to Grandma Moses we go. Instead, the author passionately but knowledgeably presides over a fabulous show and tell session spanning centuries and continents, the works of French customs officers and African chieftains. He demonstrates how dazzling, various and disarmingly sophisticated "naive" and "primitive" painting can be. A compendious and joyful package.
The Art of the Old West. Edited by Paul A. Rossi and David C. Hunt. 335 pages. Knopf. $25. Outstandingly handsome and informative frontier trip, even for those who cannot tell a Remington from a Winchester.
∧ Specimen Days by Walt Whitman. 197 pages. Godine. $25. It was Randall Jarrell who said that Walt Whitman is usually written about "as if he were the hero of a DeMille movie about Walt Whitman." These memoirs should provide a freshening reminder that he was a gentle, reticent, large-minded man. Included are early recollections, the famous Civil War journals, and some serene "nature notes" from his last years. IIlustrated by 133 contemporary photographs, including many by Brady and Eakins, the book is one of the year's handsomest and most appropriately produced.