I wish I had a bigger coffee table! This year's crop of coffee table books is full of color and information I wish was already in my brain. Impress a friend or relative or add one to your own wish list.

(Too nice for the) children's books

600 Black Spots by David A. Carter (Little Simon, $19.99, 20 pages). Carter, author of "One Red Dot" and "Blue 2," has created eye-popping sculpture and combined it with a scavenger hunt (how many dots can you count?). You can leave this book open on your table to wow people (only if you don't have small children or dogs). Rewarding from many angles.

How Many: Spectacular Paper Sculptures by Ron Van Der Meer (Robin Corey Books, $24.99, 12 pages). Suitable for attended or older children -- nice challenges in counting the number of shapes in each pop-up sculpture.

Star Wars: A Pop-Up Guide to the Galaxy by Matthew Reinhart (Orchard Books, $32.99, 6 pages) A fie on those who would let the grubby-handed masses handle Matthew Reinhart's 3-D love letter to the Star Wars universe. The lovingly crafted book is an encapsulated look at the Lucas epic with more nods toward the classic series than the regrettable prequels. A full page spread of the "Millieum Falcon," and Mos Eisley cantina are stunning. The price of admission is worth it for the final Darth Vader page. Kids, lookie no touchie.

Classics

The Annotated Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett (Norton, $35, 384 pages). This heavily annotated book is best given to a grown-up who loved the book as a child. Each page has notes, some equivalent in length to the actual text, which would seem to be a distraction for a first read of the story. It's lovely, but best as a collectible.

The Kite Runner, Illustrated Edition by Khaled Hosseini (Riverhead Books, $29.95, 352 pages). Photos of Afghan people, in color and black and white illuminate a handsome hardcover text.

Life of Pi, Deluxe Illustrated Edition by Yann Martel, illustrated by Tomislav Torjanac (Harcourt, $29.95, 315 pages). Illustrated by Croatian artist Tomislav Torjanic, selected from an international competition. A fine gift for anyone who hasn't read this winner of the 2002 Man Booker Prize -- or for someone who read and loved it.

War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy, translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsy (Knopf, $37, 1,125 pages plus epilogue, appendix, notes and historical index). In case you never did get around to finishing "War and Peace," you can begin anew with a translation that has been called "brilliant, engaging and eminently readable."

History

America Dreaming: How Youth Changed America in the '60s by Laban Carrick Hill (Little Brown, $19.99, 165 pages). This is pitched as a young adult book (12 and up), a history book chronicling the decade from Wonder bread to wonder drudges. No Wonder Bra, but plenty of burned bras, as it covers women's rights and civil rights, as well as meanies and merry pranksters. It's vivid, radical and punchy and will leave you to explain "tubal ligation."

Jimi Hendrix: An Illustrated Experience by Janie L. Hendrix and John McDermott (Atria, $45, 64 pages). A nice companion to the above book, this slipcased interactive text -- with envelopes of reproduction postcards and photos -- would be groovy to look at while listening to the 70-minute audio CD.

The War: An Intimate History, 1941-1945 by Geoffrey C. Ward and Ken Burns (Knopf, $50, 480 pages). A companion to the PBS series, this book unfolds history through images and words, creating a compelling narrative that crosses oceans, meticulously creating a portrait of war with pixels of individual lives.

Next page >