Top pick: America in Space: NASA’s First Fifty Years foreword by Neil Armstrong. 480 photographs. Published in collaboration with NASA to launch the celebration of its 50th anniversary. Abrams, 2007
Beautifully reproduced on heavy matte paper in an exuberantly sized book (roughly 11 x 15 inches), these are not your usual space photos. Many have never been published, and all seem chosen for a sense of fun, novelty, and joy of life. Even the few old favorites convey new or amusing information—in a famous group portrait of the first seven astronauts, for example, we learn that Deke Slayton and John Glenn wear work boots spray-painted silver.
Among the many rare shots, the astronauts pose in 1963 while honing their survival skills in the Nevada desert, wearing outfits they fabricated under the strong influence of the popular film Lawrence of Arabia.
The God Machine: From Boomerangs to Black Hawks, the Story of the Helicopter by James R. Chiles. Bantam, 2007 ($25) Profiles of the many helicoptrians who created this amazing contraption.
Storm Chaser: A Photographer’s Journey by Jim Reed. Abrams, 2007 ($42) Chronicles remarkable floods, geomagnetic storms, the landfall of hurricanes.
Of a Feather: A Brief History of American Birding by Scott Weidensaul. Harcourt, 2007 ($25) Obsessive ornithologists from Audubon to today’s “competitive” birders.
Cartographia: Mapping Civilizations by Vincent Virga and the Library of Congress. Little, Brown, 2007 ($60) More than 200 maps and their accompanying stories, from a 1500 B.C. cuneiform tablet to a 2001 map of the human genome. At the left, a globe from a World War II poster aimed at Middle Eastern allies of the U.S.
Very Special Relativity: An Illustrated Guide by Sander Bais. Harvard University Press, 2007 ($20.95) The fundamental concepts of Einstein’s theory in a beautifully graphic book.
Arsenals of Folly: The Making of the Nuclear Arms Race by Richard Rhodes. Knopf, 2007 ($28.95) A gripping account of the standoff between the superpowers.
Discovering the Solar System by David W. Hughes and Carole Stott. Barron’s, 2007 ($29.99) Includes a solar system mobile and an interactive wall chart.
Evolution text by Jean-Baptiste de Panafieu. Photographs by Patrick Gries. Seven Stories Press, 2007 ($65) A project from the Natural History Museum of Paris to demonstrate the reality of evolution through stunning photographs of animal skeletons and brief explanatory essays.
The Rough Guide to Genes and Cloning by Jess Buxton and Jon Turney. Rough Guides, 2007 ($16.99) The Rough Guide technique for unfamiliar lands applied to unfamiliar subjects.
The World without Us by Alan Weisman. St. Martin’s Press, 2007 ($24.95) Easily the most fascinating environmental book of the year.
Talking Hands: What Sign Language Reveals about the Mind by Margalit Fox. Simon & Schuster, 2007 ($27) Discovering the basic ingredients of language in a remote village where everyone uses sign language.
How to Photograph an Atomic Bomb by Peter Kuran. VCE, 2007 ($39.95) A quirky combination of awesome (as in “shock and awe”) photographs and technical details about how they were taken.
