Pleasures for the Holidays

"Now to get up heat enough to melt that gold, those flower tones," Vincent van Gogh wrote to his brother Theo. "It needs the whole and entire force and concentration of a single individual." The flora he described was sunflowers, and Van Gogh is the one artist who did those blossoms justice. In Sunflowers for Van Gogh (Rizzoli; 149 pages; $25), Photographer David Douglas Duncan captures the luminous, strangely feminine character of his subjects. This glowing tribute to painter and plant offers what seem to be studies of leafy blonds singing in the daylight, mourning in the shadows and brightening the earth when there is scarcely any light source, in Van Gogh's words, "with that something of the eternal which the halo used to symbolize."

In 1966 a southeast gale and an undersea earthquake sent the sea flooding through Venice. Four feet of water overflowed the Piazza San Marco. Yet according to Peter Lauritzen in Venice Preserved (Adler & Adler; 176 pages; $29.95), the deluge bore good fortune. It helped to jolt the world into rescuing Venice from nearly two centuries of decay and depredation. Photographers Jorge Lewinski and Mayotte Magnus record the resurrection of the city. Lauritzen combines a sure hand for history with a light satirical touch for the bureaucracy of restoration.

Two generations ago, George Eastman, founder of Eastman Kodak, gave Rochester a movie house. Better than that, he commissioned a brilliant young painter to create posters of the films on view. Alas, many of those celluloid epics have long since been turned into banjo picks, but the artwork survives in Movie Posters: The Paintings of Batiste Madalena (Abrams; 64 pages; $14.95). Here the famous and the forgotten are captured in the forceful style of art deco. Once upon a screen, these vamps, clowns and pirates romanced in a world of black and white. But outside the theater, Madalena made them leap from the walls in vibrant hues. This is one kind of movie colorizing that deserves sustained applause.

I is for imaginative, ingenious and inventive. All are adjectives that apply to the 26 paintings Mike Wilks has devised in celebration of the alphabet. Each picture in The Ultimate Alphabet (Holt; $19.95) contains a multitude of objects illustrating a single letter. Among the 259 items in G, the reader is invited to identify a Gypsy guitarist garbed in gaudy garments in a graveyard full of graven images. The T painting teems with 427 items, including Tweedledum and Tweedledee and enough trees to traumatize a topiarist. For the reader who spots the most words, the publishers offer a $15,000 prize.

He's the top, he's Mickey Mouse, and he's the subject of his own biography. Mickey Mouse: His Life and Times (Harper & Row; 96 pages; $14.95) documents the career of Walt Disney's cartoon creation, the cheerful rodent who lifted America's spirits during the Great Depression and went on to become a beloved international star. Mickeymania inspired books, toys, watches and countless other items, many of which are pictured in Mickey Mouse Memorabilia: The Vintage Years 1928-1938 (Abrams; 180 pages; $27.50). Whether happily dozing in an armchair that is the base of a lamp or merrily dancing with his Minnie atop a toy piano, Mickey is the sturdy little guy we recognize in all of us: the mouse as Everyman.