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DONANA: SPAIN'S WILDLIFE WILDERNESS by Juan Antonio Fernández. 253 pages. Taplinger. $29.95. Tucked away in a corner of Spain, southwest of Seville, is the Coto de Doñana habitat for rare and endangered species: the imperial and short-toed eagles, great bustard, bee eater, azure-winged magpie and, in migration at least, the great flamingo. Those who want to view this ornithological paradise firsthand should be aware of the customary protocol: visitors must get permits from the director of the local biological station to feast their eyes on its plumed riches. This sumptuous pictorial tour cannot compare with a real excursion; on the other hand, it is about one-hundredth the price—and almost as beautiful.
THE LOOK BOOK. Edited by Leo Rosten. 397 pages. Abrams. $29.95. From its first issue in 1937, which carried a cover picture of Reich Marshal Hermann Göring, to its final number in 1971, depicting the preWatergate Nixon White House, Look chronicled and celebrated a generation of American life. Novelist-Humorist Leo Rosten, who was once chief editorial adviser to Look, has pored through back issues to compile this souvenir album. Articles by Norman Mailer, Harry Truman, Eugene O'Neill and others do not stand the test of age. But the powerful pictures of '40s war, '50s politics and '60s frenzy more than compensate for shortcomings in the text.
NIJINSKY DANCING. Text and commentary by Lincoln Kirstein. 177 pages. Knopf. $29.95. Nijinsky spent ten years growing, ten years learning, ten years dancing and 30 years deteriorating. He was an unchallenged performer. His choreographic reputation is less secure: Nijinsky had time to design only four ballets before incurable schizophrenia ended his career. This somewhat overproduced book traces that parabolic career from 1906 to 1917. Producer-Balletomane Lincoln Kirstein's weighty introductory essays are lightened by a hundred astonishing photographs that demonstrate why a dancer 50 years dead continues to leap in the imagination and styles of choreographers everywhere in the world.
PEANUTS JUBILEE by Charles M. Schulz. 222 pages. Holt, Rinehart & Winston. $29.95. Good grief, good old Charlie Brown is 25 years old! The birthday reminder may be a little depressing, but the biography is a multicolored high. With a series of old Sunday strips, black and white panels and prose reminiscences, Peanuts Creator Charles M. Schulz follows his charges from their days as Saturday Evening Post cartoons to the halcyon epoch of Snoopy as the Red Baron, Lucy as a 5¢ psychiatrist, and Charlie Brown as the boy who firmly decides to be wishy one day and washy the next. Schulz's humor remains poignant, whimsical and informed with religious insight—The Gospel According to Peanuts was more than a bestseller; it was the truth.