History in the Discovering

AMERICAN TREASURES IN THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, edited by Rachel Tsutsumi and with an introduction by Garry Wills (Abrams, $39.95, illustrated).

Most travelers love history, and we sometimes overlook one of the most significant collections of American heritage. That’s because the Library of Congress is located apart from museum row on Washington, D.C.’s mall. And because, until this year, the library housed no permanent exhibition of its vast and eclectic treasures.

This imaginative coffee-table volume catalogs this new exhibit, and along the way accomplishes something novel: It is, as historian Garry Wills suggests in his introduction, like cracking open a chunk of amber. We are astonished at the wonders preserved.

Such as: a Pilgrim hymnal that is the first book published in what would become the United States. The dessert page of an 1882 cookbook. A handwritten working draft of Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address. The first dime novel. The architect’s schematic plan for the U.S. Capitol. A photograph of that instant when the Wright brothers attained flight. . . .

Such descriptions do no real justice to the precision of this exhibit or this book. The library’s collection totals nearly 110 million items. Those selected for inclusion are breathtakingly few. Experienced eyes of curators spare us from being overwhelmed, with an exquisite, arresting and manageable sampler of artifacts, each worth reflection and re-reflection.

Imagine, for instance, a picture of the 1934 government-commissioned photo albums of Dorothea Lange, which five years before Steinbeck and “The Grapes of Wrath” documented the awful plight of California’s migrant farm workers. When you eventually turn the page you veer off to explore another wonder: a color sketch board by Orson Welles of a cardinal’s costume he designed for a 1937 Federal Theater Project (FTA) production of “The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus.”

Each fine color illustration in this book is accompanied by a page or so of curator’s explanation, the kind of essential context so often compressed into small type in museum shows. Here, words play equally with objects, elevating this from mere catalog to lasting history, and a coffee-table book that will have you late for bed.

SMITHSONIAN’S GREAT BATTLES & BATTLEFIELDS OF THE CIVIL WAR: A Definitive Field Guide by Jay Wertz and Edwin C. Bearss (Morrow, $42, maps, illustrations).

Usually we regard the Civil War chronologically. Which means we become absorbed with the pivotal happenings--those singular battles of Gettysburg, Vicksburg, Ft. Sumter, Atlanta, etc. It is possible, therefore, to lose sight of the larger geography of the conflict, particularly its effect on immigrant settlement of the West.

This book by TV producer Wertz and battlefield historian Bearss is designed for motorists. It divides the war into states and regions, and into sites big and small within each. The Civil War then becomes a vastly larger matter. Naturally, such an approach complicates context and results in a book bulky enough to double as a child’s booster seat or workout weights. But it also enlarges the possibilities for exploration and understanding.

There are few experiences, and I’m speaking of myself here, to equal the emotion of walking a battlefield in one’s own country and imagining the battle. This book maps it out for travelers. All of it.

THE NATIONAL TRUST GUIDE by Lydia Greeves and Michael Trinick (Abrams, $29.95, illustrated, maps).

In keeping with this week’s history theme, here’s how the British do it. The National Trust was founded in 1895 to protect places of historical interest in Britain--and also places of natural beauty. Thus, the trust is conservator of 500,000 acres as well as 200 historic houses, 150 gardens and sundry oddities from a yacht to a printing press.

This volume is a splendid inventory of all this, lushly illustrated, full of surprise and written with erudite British pride in the island’s heritage. And that makes this volume itself a treasure.

Quick Trips

NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC’S GUIDE TO THE NATIONAL PARKS: Revised Edition (National Geographic, $24, illustrations, maps).

The name National Geographic carries such authority as to raise expectations higher than this otherwise perfectly serviceable but compressed guidebook can meet, covering too much with not quite enough.

WASHINGTON, D.C.: The Rough Guide by Jules Brown (Rough Guides, $14.95, paperback, maps).

The Rough Guides are among the best in the business, but this volume has taken on a tone too flip. When I walk into the National Archives and lay eyes on the Declaration of Independence, I want Jefferson, I want gooseflesh. I don’t need my guidebook to prepare me with a wisecrack from P.J. O’Rourke.

VACANT EDEN: Roadside Treasures of the Sonoran Desert, introduction by Jim Heimann and photography by Abigail Gumbiner and Carol Hayden (Balcony, $23.50, paperback, illustrated).

If your tastes run to the whimsical, take a peek at this photo collection of the streamline architecture and motel signage of the hardscrabble Southwest, a garish and now fading footnote of our history.

Balzar is a national correspondent for The Times. Books to Go appears the second and fourth week of every month.