XXX Libris

* When Elephants Paint: The Quest of Two Russian Artists to Save the Elephants of Thailand, by Komar and Melamid with Mia Fineman, introduction by Dave Eggers (HarperPerennial, $20). In this hilarious and moving picaresque tale, our heroes—Russian conceptual-art pranksters Vitaly Komar and Alex Melamid—travel to Thailand to teach its laid-off timber-hauling pachyderms to paint for a living, discovering heretofore untapped talent in Bird (age ten, hurls his brush after every fifth stroke, and "approaches the canvas with a potent combination of exhilaration and fury") and Nom Chok (age two, "the 'enfant terrible' of the elephant art world," "favors deep, murky tones"). Fatter than Julian Schnabel, more temperamental than de Kooning, the Babars of the art world throw themselves into their work—"no stops for bananas"—and take Thailand by storm, generating much sanuk (Thai for "fun"). Then it's on to Christie's, where these media darlings' masterpieces raise $75,000 for elephant charities. Melamid hits it, well, right on the trunk, saying of his pupils, "Elephants are really the best Abstract Expressionists—they don't think much." —Caroline Fraser

* Maverick's: The Story of Big-Wave Surfing, by Matt Warshaw, foreword by Daniel Duane (Chronicle Books, $30). Like an irregular set of waves bombing the coastline, the chapters of this history roll in with a mix of high drama and no drama: Warshaw intersperses his chronicle of a series of monster-wave surf days at Maverick's, the legendary break near California's Half Moon Bay, with the drier tale of the sport itself, starting a century ago with 100-pound redwood planks and culminating with big-wave surfing's recent commercialization. Warshaw's prose is evocative (the account of Jay Moriarity's December 1994 wipeout, days before the break took Mark Foo's life, will leave you gasping for air) and backed by solid reporting, making this much more than just another glossy surf-porn book. —Claire Martin

* Hotspots, by Russell A. Mittermeier, Cristina Goettsch Mittermeier, Norman Myers, and Patricio Robles Gil, foreword by Harrison Ford (CEMEX, $65). A tiger peering through a thicket of elephant grass in Burma; a Colombian boy and his burro in a burned-out Andean forest; Malaysian farmers stooping to plant rice in monsoon rains:Hotspots is the rare a Conservation International's term for Earth's 25 most endangered, most biologically diverse regions, and the text delivers detail and analysis enough to satisfy the most ardent environmentalist. But it is the book's sharp, brilliant images that bring the urgency of the global extinction crisis to life. —Dianna Delling

* Jungles, photographs by Frans Lanting (Taschen, $40). This photographic legend's latest, lushest epic showcases 20 years of hard-won trophies—broccoli-topped forests shot while dangling from a helicopter, impressionistic macaws captured from a tippy 100-foot tower, and dazzling eye-to-eye chameleonencounters paid for with patient days in the muck. Lanting's photos stress the parallels between the world's tropical forests, yet the Dutch-born photographer—who developed his signature ultra-close-up style in the early 1980s while living among a colony of California elephant seals—manages to bring into focus the natural individuality that the jungle's fertile tangle obscures. —Jason Daley

* Inherit the Earth, by Sheila Metzner (Little, Brown, $75). Her icebergs feel cold. Her Venezuelan waterfalls are walls of wild liquid unadorned by the clichés of tropical flowers. Her Arches National Monument rises like organic stone under a dark, serious sky. Art and fashion photographer Sheila Metzner's images of Costa Rica and Alaska, Easter Island and Venezuela, Utah and Egypt have a soft-edged look like well-traveled Seurats, but there's nothing vague about them. And although the text—unedited entries from her travel diary—gets a little doe-eyed in places ("I am in iceberg dream. Scintillating planet of light."), these 66 photos covering ten years of journeying are anything but meek. —Gillian Ashley

* Upstream: Fly Fishing in the American West, photographs by Charles Lindsay, text by Thomas McGuane (Aperture, $40). Blurred shapes, black-velvet shadows, and pointillistic details crowd Lindsay's gorgeous monochrome visions of trout, bugs, and anglers found streamside from Wyoming to British Columbia. Montana novelist Tom McGuane's lithe meditations reveal the ways in which fishing and other field sports "ventilate our monotony." Of this quest to catch fish, he writes, "I wonder if the thing captured is the mercurial bond with nature, the need for which lies in greater or lesser measure in all of us." The picture-maker and author make perfect partners here. —Hal Espen