When November rolls around, reviewers begin to think of books they can recommend as the ideal Christmas gifts. The publication of a book that, by its very presence, announces its grandeur requires a lot of effort and they make wonderful gifts. One such book is China: People, Place, Culture, and History ($40.00, DK Publishing) by a team of experts; historians, travel writers, architects, anthropologists, and photographers. It arrives at a time when Americans have some concerns or speculations about its future, but China is an ancient nation that has gone through extraordinary transformations and will continue to as it emerges into the 21^st century, so whatever problems exist will be resolved. Westerners are frequently astonished to discover that the Chinese preceded European culture with their own poetry, inventions, science, medicine, and a vibrant culture that is captured in this book and illustrated by hundreds of extraordinary photos and artwork. China is the oldest continuous civilization—4,000 years—and the world’s most populous nation. Its story, past and present, has been captured in a book that is more than just the sum of the vast research it represents, but page by page on which the nation bedazzles and amazes. As a gift, this has got to be counted a great prize. This publisher also offers Warrior: A Visual History of the Fighting Man ($50.00) by H. R. Grant that is a feast for the eye and dramatic story of the frontline soldier from the days of ancient Greece to the modern U.S. Marine. It captures the dramatic experiences and day-to-day accounts of those who fought history’s great campaigns. History has been determined by the success or failure of soldiers in combat and this book puts you there with them. Anyone who has ever worn a uniform, faced an enemy, or who just loves to read history will value this book as a great gift. Check out www.dk.com.

Despite a vast amount of broadcast and print media, plus the Internet, it is difficult to know the truth about many issues without turning to the experts who write books about them. That said, those books can take both sides of an issues, so it comes down often to how skeptical you are in your quest for the truth, how optimistic about the future, and how willing you are to set aside earlier notions. An example of this is The Battle for Barrels: Peak Oil Myths & World Oil Futures by Duncan Clarke ($35.00, Profile Books Ltd, London/Trafalgar Square Publishing, Chicago). One can hardly read anything written about oil these days without some general reference to diminishing resources and sometimes to the "Peak Oil" theory which posits that the Earth’s supply of oil is finite and it will eventually be all used. Clarke is chairman and CEO of Global Pacific & Partners and acknowledged as an expert on geopolitical issues in the oil industry. He previously wrote Empires of Oil and this book closely examines why "Peak Oil" is not happening for a wide range of sometimes dauntingly complex reasons. This is not light reading, but it does suggest that, despite the rising demands on oil by developing Third World nations, the world’s reserves of oil will keep flowing for a very long time to come. The triumph of this book is its calm review of the movement behind the apocalyptic "Peak Oil" theory—rendering it pure myth—and the realities of oil discovery and extraction for some time to come.

The recent "housing bubble" which was really a lending bubble based on low interest rates and loans made to people who would not normally have qualified for loans, particularly those large enough to finance the purchase of a home, has now evolved into a financial problem that will no doubt ripple throughout the entire economy. There are, in addition, reports that the U.S. dollar is losing is value against other currencies such as the Euro. This is probably the best time ever for Nathan Lewis’s book, Gold: The Once and Future Money, ($27.00, John Wiley & Sons) to have been published. Lewis notes that for the last three millennia, the world’s commercial centers have used one variant or another of a gold standard "for good reason: gold forces governments to be fiscally responsible and it provides a stable environment for rapid economic growth." It has also universally been regarded as a safe investment. This is a book of history combined with some worthwhile analysis of how nations and financial institutions have gone astray when they begin to "print money", spend imprudently, and crash an otherwise viable system. It is also a good time to read Uneasy Neighbors: Canada, the USA and the Dynamics of State, Industry and Culture ($33.99, Wiley) by David T. Jones and David Kilgour. The latter has served in the Canadian parliament for many years and the former is a retired U.S. senior foreign-service officer. Together they describe two nations that approach their cultural heritage from decidedly different outlooks, both with citizens who take considerable pride in their nations as separate democracies united on one continent. Both have a vital stake in significant issues of national identity, economics, culture, religion, military defense, human rights and the environment. This book is a primer on these issues and perhaps inadvertently why one or the other nation does a better or poorer job addressing them.

It is not unusual for humankind to take an interest in the weather and, on a broader basis, the climate (which is measured not in days or weeks, but thousands of years). Since the 1970s there has been a focus on the theory of "global warming" filled with dire predictions creating a fair amount of anxiety when, in fact, the science underlying the theory is being debunked and decried rapidly these days. People are beginning to understand that, far from being the result of human activity, the weather and the climate is very much determined by the Sun in combination with other natural factors such as the oceans, clouds, and volcanic activity. Michael Sims has been in love with the Sun since childhood and he has written Apollo’s Fire: A Day on Earth in Nature and Imagination ($24.95, Viking), a lyrical review of the Sun in myth, literature, and folklore, combined with his knowledge of astronomy and earth science. The reader is taken on a journey of a literary day from sunrise to sunset in a very satisfying examination of how critical the Sun was, is, and always will be to life on Earth. Environmentalists tend to see natural phenomenon and either idealize them or to see them as portents of destruction. The reality is that we live in a very old galaxy on a very old planet.

At long last, for parents whose kids come home from school or hear something on television saying that "global warming" is destroying the earth or soon will, there’s a great book for younger readers, age 8 to 12. It’s The Sky’s Not Falling: Why It’s Okay to Chill About Global Warming ($17.95, Kids Ahead Books, an imprint of World Ahead Media, softcover) by Holly Fretwell. All of us, adults and children alike, have been deluged by "news" about "global warming." Much of it has been based on flawed or deliberately false computer models. The