HOLIDAY GIFT BOOKS : Going Away for the Holidays

The natural splendors of this planet and the endless variety of cultures it nourishes are captured in kaleidoscopic beauty by this season’s travel books.

Eternal Landscape, photographs by Emis Schulthess, text by Sigmund Widner (Alfred A. Knopf: $60; 139 pp.; 0-394-57144-4). In stunning clarity and color, this book is a visual tribute to the American Southwest. Some of the offerings are too huge to be contained between the covers; they’re presented in three-foot fold-out pages.

The “land of infinite surprises lies beyond the power of the human imagination . . . and can’t be captured by any camera,” Schulthess admits. “You need to have seen it, to have actually stood in the midst of it.” And then he proceeds to attempt the impossible in 63 images, grand and detailed.

If you have seen the Grand Canyon, the sand dunes of New Mexico, the limestone sculptures of Bryce Canyon, if you have stood beneath the vast heavens of the West, these pictures are already in your heart. Some of Schulthess’ vantage points are beyond most visitors. These are panoramas taken from a helicopter using a remote-control rotating camera. Zion, the Valley of the Virgin River, Painted Desert, Lake Powell, the Petrified Forest and Monument Valley are captured like scenic jewels to crown the photographer’s 30-year infatuation with the land.

Autumn, a New England Journey, photographs by Candace Mate and Ference Mate, writings by New England authors (W. W. Norton: $40; 160 pp.; 920256-17-1). Edna St. Vincent Millay, Henry David Thoreau, Robert Frost and other 19th- and 20th-Century writers lend their selected poems and essays to this collection of 92 full-color photographs.

This book is a sentimental journey past tiny lakes and solitary rowboats, fallen leaves glittering with dew, stately maple forests in full riot of red and yellow foliage. Here are autumn scenes from Maine to Mt. Washington, from Connecticut’s seacoast to Woodstock. There are pastoral hillsides, rocky beaches, old cemeteries carpeted with crunchy yellow leaves.

The words evoke a nostalgia, a sense of home: Maybe it is, as Thoreau mentions, that we are drawn to “the indescribable innocence and beneficence of nature--of sun and wind and rain, of summer and winter--such health, such cheer, they afford forever!”

Also included are hand-drawn maps, brief descriptions of the places these photos inspire one to visit, and a practical guide for planning a tour to these time-honored hills.

The Spirit of the Cotswolds, by Susan Hill, photographs by Nick Meers (Michael Joseph/Viking Penguin; $22.95; 206 pp.; 0-7181-2905-9). Novelist Susan Hill takes us on a personal journey through the Cotswolds with their round hills and ancient villages. She explores the towns on the tourist path, but she doesn’t hesitate to leave that road often as well, heading down hidden lanes to unmapped villages, over old stone bridges and past medieval churches, readily noting: “I very often like the outsides of churches a great deal better than the insides.”

Such candor, combined with her knowledge and her love of this region, make her a delightful guide. The photos enhance and substantiate her cozy prose, her thoughtful imaginings and her intimate writing style. And yet she says that, to be a discoverer, you must “travel with a map only--preferably an Ordnance Survey map--and, although I say it against myself, never with any sort of guidebook.”

Wainwright in Scotland by A. Wainwright, photographs by Derry Brabbs (Michael Joseph/BBC: $22.95; 224 pp.; 0-7181-2901-6). Without exception, travel books are written with love or, at the very least, with a fascination for the place featured. When this is combined with the powers of detailed observation and the sense of history that comes only with age and exposure, the result is very special.

Wainwright has traveled to Scotland every year for 50 years, always with enthusiasm, always with the desire to be thrilled, and he’s never disappointed. In his book, he asks Scots to forgive his presumptuousness in writing about their land. How could they refuse? He has traveled their land from end to end, sketched it, walked the length and breadth of it and must surely know it as well as most of its year-round inhabitants. And mainly, he just loves it so well.

These first four works have a common thread. They are love affairs with the land, with the beauty of nature and the shape of the earth, with just a nod to human things: churches, villages, fences. Something is missing. Finally it becomes apparent: What is strangely absent is people! It is as though they have all gone away.

And so I turn to a pair of books about India. I can hardly imagine a book about India that is not a book about people.

Monsoon, by Steve McCurry (Thames & Hudson: $35; 84 pp.; 0-500-54135-3). Here are 84 spectacular photos chronicling the life of a people who live where survival and weather are linked openly and at the most basic level. Floods, drought, bloated rivers, raging storms, ruined crops--all are captured in searing clarity from the point of view of the people who suffer them. One memorable photo is of an old man up to his neck in water, carrying a rusty sewing machine on his shoulder. The true glory of India, and indeed of the earth, is raw and basic; it is this truth that McCurry captures.

Maharaja, the Spectacular Heritage of Princely India, photographs by Sumio Uchiyama, text by Andrew Robinson (Vendome Press: $50; 160 pp.; 0-86565-096-9). At the other end of the human spectrum is the maharaja, surrounded by marble palaces, elephants and fine cars, champagne and concubines.

Just as no place equals India for the squalor of its impoverishment, no place quite matches the splendor of its royalty. While the princes lost their power when India became independent, their legacy lives on in palatial estates, lavish weddings, festivals and a tradition of spectacular excess. The 100 photos were taken in the state of Rajasthan. As always, India remains the land of contrasts.

Cultural Atlas of Japan, by Martin Collcutt, Marius Jansen and Isao Kumakura (Facts On File: $40; 240 pp.; 0-8160-1927-4), is a travel book that goes miles beyond most in extent of information. With extensive text, photographs, maps and charts, the book interrelates Japan’s geography, history, anthropology and the arts, from ancient times to the present.

This survey of Japanese civilization provides a museum-full of information between its covers, touching on such aspects of Japanese life as rice farming, the tea ceremony, the great tombs, Buddhism and Shinto, imperialism and industrialization, geishas and samurai, World War II, Kabuki theater and ceramic arts, climate, geology and popular food. It’s a rich cultural tome, both for those who know Japan well and for those who know it hardly at all.