Gardens of the Roman World, by Patrick Bowe (Los Angeles: J. Getty Museum, 2004; $50), depicts gardens ranging in style and use from humble sustenance to imperial luxury (including Hadrian's Villa, shown at left), but all featuring that stunning Mediterranean sunshine. Another Getty Museum book, Ancient Greek Painting and Its Echoes in Later Art (2004; $75), traces the profound impact works from Crete, Pompeii, and Delos, among other places, had on later European art.
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The expansive two-volume set New Perspectives on China's Past: Twentieth-Century Chinese Archaeology (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004; $250), edited by Xiaoneng Yang, the curator of Chinese Art at the Nelson Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, Missouri, details archaeological treasures from this ancient culture.
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While strictly ethnographical, Karl Bodmer's North American Prints (Lincoln, Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press, 2004; $150) is a beautiful collection of the engravings and prints made from Bodmer's watercolors and sketches of the diverse Great Plains Indians he met on his 1832-34 travels with the German scientist Maximilian. They are some of the first accurate depictions of these peoples.
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