Books

Compact discs are generally the gift of choice for the jazz enthusiast, but books and videos on jazz can be provocative and informative alternatives. Here are some of the year’s top books and videos, as selected by members of The Times’ jazz staff:

“The Duke Ellington Reader,” edited by Mark Tucker, Oxford University Press ($30). These 101 pieces, most of them chronologically arranged, draw on a variety of sources, from the often naive comments of the 1920s to posthumous essays in the 1970s and ‘80s. The few pieces attributed to Ellington himself were probably ghostwritten; the main value of this collection is the vast diversity of attitudes represented, along with some passages that are as sensitive as others are myopic.