Two coffee table cookbooks that spark daydreams...

Two coffee table cookbooks that spark daydreams of other places are good last-minute holiday gifts, and they’re pricey enough to be special presents for dedicated cooks.

In “The French Vineyard Table” (Clarkson Potter, $55), three-star French chef Georges Blanc explores the wine-growing regions of France. Through lavish color photos, recipes that meet Blanc’s high standards and stories of winemakers and cooks in each region, you get a sense of what Blanc means when he says French food and wine make “the whole world dream.”

The world is the weighty subject of “The Gourmet Atlas” (Macmillan, $39.95), which attempts to codify food around the globe through geography and social and cultural history. Of course, it doesn’t succeed--no single book could. But authors Susie Ward, Claire Clifton and Jenny Stacey wisely divide the material into chapters on ingredients and show the similarities and differences of, say, bread or nuts in countries around the world.