Holiday books: The season’s best gift titles

A History of the World in 100 Objects

by Neil MacGregor

(Viking, $45)

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Telling the history of the world through 100 objects might seem impossible, said John Adamson in the London Telegraph. But Neil MacGregor, the director of the British Museum, has performed the trick “triumphantly.” From Egyptian mummies to a tiny solar-powered light, these artifacts selected from the museum’s vast collection supply a fascinating account of human history, and in MacGregor’s hands “even humdrum objects flash with ideas.” The “obscurer” items often steal the show, said Andrew Roberts in the Financial Times. “We knew the museum had the Rosetta Stone,” but “how many of us knew about such beautiful objects” as the ceremonial “ball-game belt” from pre-Columbian Mexico?

The Louvre: All the Paintings

by Erich Lessing and Vincent Pomarède

(Black Dog & Leventhal, $75)

Those not booking a ticket to Paris for the holidays can still enjoy a visit to the Louvre with this “doorstopper,” said Billy Heller in the New York Post. Across the past 50 years, photographer Erich Lessing has assembled a complete catalog of the Louvre’s 3,022 paintings. Thanks to a 25-minute session he was once granted with the museum’s foremost piece, readers can even “decipher Mona Lisa’s enigmatic smile” without being jostled by hundreds of other oglers. “Don’t assume this is just a picture book,” said Fran Wood in the Newark, N.J., Star-Ledger. “Illuminating critical notes” by the Louvre’s general curator offer a “virtual mini-course” in the museum’s holdings.

The Roof at the Bottom of the World

by Edmund Stump

(Yale, $30)

“Antarctica is for most of us a place of dreams, where only a few intrepid explorers have dared to venture,” said the Toronto Globe and Mail. Geologist Edmund Stump brings us there in this jaw-dropping exploration of the Transantarctic Mountains, the most remote mountain chain on earth. Through maps, essays, and his own “stunning” photographs, Stump “charts a voyage well worth taking.” The topographical maps are marvelous, said Robert R. Harris in The New York Times, and the routes he’s superimposed on them will be a boon to “anyone confused about just how the explorers made their way.”

Vivian Maier: Street Photographer

edited by John Maloof

(powerHouse, $40)

Vivian Maier’s “recent, sudden ascent from reclusive eccentric to esteemed photographer is one of the more remarkable stories” in the history of the medium, said David Zax in Smithsonian. Beginning in the 1950s, Maier, a nanny who worked in New York and Chicago, took thousands of street photos she never shared, and all might have been lost had a real estate agent not discovered a box of her negatives and publicized the work. “Maier’s photographs are extraordinary,” said Josh Rothman in The Boston Globe. Her oeuvre is “the equal, at first glance, of the great street photographs by Henri Cartier-Bresson or Diane Arbus.”

The Oxford Companion to Beer

edited by Garrett Oliver

(Oxford, $65)

“To decry the decline of America is to know nothing about beer,” said Alexander Nazaryan in The New Republic. With 1,700 breweries now operating across the country, beer has enjoyed a true renaissance, acknowledged here by a book so authoritative that the movement “isn’t likely to need another for a millennium or so.” Written by a “veritable Manhattan Project” of beer experts, the OCB features 1,100 smart and sometimes amusing entries—on topics from “abbey beers” to “zymurgy.” It’s high time, said Steve Greenlee in The Boston Globe, that a publisher extended to beer “the same sort of respect that wine has long enjoyed.”

100 Unforgettable Dresses

by Hal Rubenstein

(Harper, $35)

Some dresses “make an impression on the collective culture beyond a fleeting fashion trend,” said Samantha Critchell in the Associated Press. Hal Rubenstein, fashion director at InStyle, knows a few things about what makes a dress transcendent. “Every dress tells a story” in this homage to his 100 favorites. Be warned: “‘Unforgettable’ doesn’t always mean beautiful,” said Jocelyn McClurg in USA Today. Witness Cher’s Cruella De Vil–esque Bob Mackie dress, from 1986, or comedian Phyllis Diller’s “tent dress,” from 1960. “But there are plenty of knockouts, too, from Princess Diana’s black “revenge” dress to Halle Berry “in a revealingly embroidered Elie Saab,” for the 2002 Oscars.