Gift quandary? Book it; Noteworthy new releases to consider this season.

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Byline: Nicholas A. Basbanes

For all the electronic trinkets out there vying for your attention this time of year, a book remains an ideal choice for holiday giving. Happily, there are a number of splendid new releases to choose from, many of them superb examples of what some unenlightened souls consider to be a declining species - books noteworthy not just for the pretty pictures, but most assuredly for the thoughtful texts as well.

Here are some varied examples recently released by a number of publishers that I have found particularly appealing and submit for your gift consideration.

"The National Parks: America's Best Idea," by Ken Burns and Dayton Duncan; Alfred A. Knopf, 404 pages, with 440 illustrations and one removable map, $50.

The latest tie-in from filmmaker Ken Burns and textual collaborator Dayton Duncan focuses on America's extraordinary assemblage of national parks - 400 sites comprising some 84 million acres, from Acadia in Maine to Haleakala in Hawaii and Denali in Alaska - a true treat of a book that fills in details in ways that the television documentaries can never approach.

This companion volume to the Public Broadcasting series of the same name is a lively tribute that offers insights and depth that go well beyond the truncated presentation on video, including mini biographies of such luminaries of John Muir, Theodore Roosevelt, Ansel Adams. America's best idea, indeed.

"The Lost Tombs of Thebes: Life in Paradise," by Zahi Hawass, with photographs by Sandro Vannini; Thames & Hudson, 288 pages, with 208 illustrations, including 20 foldouts, $80.

Zahi Hawass, secretary general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities in Egypt and something of an antiquities celebrity in his own right, and his frequent collaborator, the Italian photographer Sandro Vannini, combine to offer armchair travelers a breathtaking excursion through a series of tombs not far from the Valley of the Kings, the wonderfully decorated resting places of prominent people who were not pharaohs, but served them with distinction. The illustrations are quite wonderful and the text substantive. Amateur archaeologists will not be disappointed.

"The Toon Treasury of Classic Children's Comics," selected and edited by Art Spiegelman and Francoise Mouly; Abrams ComicArts, 352 pages, $49.95.

Comics have become one hot collectible over the past several decades, with even the literature of the genre itself of consuming interest. The Pulitzer Prize graphic memoirist Art Spiegelman (for...

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