Architecture, Interiors, Travel

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CALIFORNIA MEDITERRANEAN

With a survey of 20 such residences between Santa Barbara and Long Beach, architect Marc Appleton demonstrates how this nearly 100-year-old architectural style can be freshly reexamined, without being mired in nostalgia, for a new generation of enthusiasts. The highlights of each house's history are uncovered, but then the reader is ushered into the present with a look at what's been added and subtracted inside and out to keep the home current. An eclectic 1926 example in Santa Monica has a stainless-steel kitchen and a 21st-century new wing by Modernist Steven Ehrlich.

Rizzoli, $50

TIVOLI GARDENS

In his introduction to this journey through one of the world's great amusement parks, John Loring , the longtime design director for Tiffany's and, since 1996, designer of the famed Christmas lights at the Copenhagen park, tells how renowned photographer__Harry Benson__ first visited the historic destination in 1963 with the Beatles' George Harrison. "One could think of it as their Magical Mystery Tour ," writes Loring, explaining how both men had become seduced by its spectacle. Benson would return again and again, recently capturing these images and, in turn, Tivoli Gardens' fantastical sense of place.

Abrams, $50

CLIFF MAY AND THE MODERN RANCH HOUSE

By 1970 the Ranch type, a humble house with features that make indoor-outdoor living a breeze, had achieved such ubiquitousness in the suburbs that it seemed to have become "the American Architecture"—what Frank Lloyd Wright often spoke of giving us. Fast-forward only 20 years, and the Ranch was being remodeled out of existence. It still is. While loaded with great archival material, this overdue reappraisal of Cliff May, the form's master, has enough recently photographed houses to suggest that the Ranch's relevance isn't lost on everyone.

Rizzoli, $60

DECORATING MASTER CLASS

Having hundreds of projects to her credit, including many residences featured in Architectural Digest, interior designer Elissa Cullman , of Cullman Kravis, could have published a monograph, a simple showcase, of her firm's acclaimed interiors. Instead, the first book on the firm is something much greater: a hands-on resource that anyone with an interest in interior design is sure to find valuable. Using images of her work—many by AD contributor Durston Saylor —to illustrate her points, Cullman walks the reader through each facet of decorating a home, while generously revealing the firm's singular approach to the task at hand.

Abrams, $45

NOTTING HILL

Although the eponymous film starring Hugh Grant and Julia Roberts had a large impact on this architecturally rich and, now, ultraexclusive neighborhood, long before the blockbuster opened the floodgates of tourism, a London vacation was not complete without a visit to Notting Hill and a stroll around its Portobello Road antiques shops. Celebrated photographer Derry Moore, a contributor to Architectural Digest since 1973, knows the place well, having resided there since 1979. Who better, then, to document it? He brilliantly translates Notting Hill's looks, feels and moods, and his prefatory historical text lets the reader embark on that tour adequately informed.

Frances Lincoln, $29.95