New Book Roundup: Coffee Table Books for Holiday Giving

Anglophiles would appreciate unwrapping these two books this holiday season: One Hundred & One Beautiful Towns in Great Britain, with informative write-ups by Tom Aitken and full-page photos on quaint places from Penzance in Cornwall to Stornoway in the Outer Hebrides; and London, an oversized photographic ode to the English capital's parks, architecture, and neighborhoods, by photographer Richard Bryant. Author Peter Ackroyd provides an introduction to this limited-run edition, which includes seven gatefold spreads. Meanwhile, fans of Eire can relive damp nights warming up with a friendly pint in hand with The Irish Pub, a photo-driven tour by James Fennell and Turtle Bunbury of Ireland's favorite public houses, urban and rural, venerable and contemporary. Robert Frank: Peru gathers together for the first time the complete series of photographs taken during the legendary photographer's 1948 visit to Peru. Frank's black-and-white shots captured the country's dramatic panoramas and weathered faces. Painting at the Edge of the World: The Watercolours of Tony Foster contains vistas of the Grand Canyon, Mount St. Helens, a coral reef in the Maldives, and other natural wonders—all painted onsite (or underwater, as the casemay be), endowing Foster's works with immediacy and authenticity.

Reading Matchmaker: If You Like . . .

…Azar Nafisi's Reading Lolita in Tehran, try the author's latest memoir, Things I've Been Silent About. The book recounts Nafisi's growing up in the Iranian capital, with a father who served as mayor of Tehran and a mother who was one of the first women elected to the Iranian Parliament. Nafisi's complicated family life is interwoven with the country's own political and cultural upheavals. Soulful and outspoken, Nafisi gives her readers another intimate glimpse into a little-known country.