Dec. 6-13, 2000 — The holidays are fast approaching, and one of the easiest gift-buying strategies is to head to your favorite bookstore. Three gorgeous new coffee-table books can fill the bill for those who love books but don't have the time or the interest to read a 600-page novel. The recipient can flip them open to any page, and something of interest--text or a photo—is sure to catch their eye.

Capitalizing on the 175th anniversary of the waterway that forever changed the world, not to mention upstate New York, is Erie Canal Legacy: Architectural Treasures of the Empire State, featuring photography by Andy Olenick and text by Richard O. Reisem (Landmark Society of Upstate New York, Rochester; 208 pages; $39.95). The history lesson begins just inside the cover, with a map of New York state tracing the route of the so-called "Grand Canal," as well as a graph showing the 365-foot elevation change from east to west that necessitated the canal's intricate lock system. (An interesting explanation of how a lock works is included elsewhere in the book.) The lesson continues throughout the book, organized from Albany to Buffalo with landmarks, historic homes and buildings, and educational sites getting equal play in 270 gorgeous full-color photos.

Olenick and Reisem aren't just historians with a passing interest in the canal. Olenick and research assistant Sherri Olenick, his wife, spent four years taking photos in all seasons of churches, homes, municipal buildings, landscapes and aqueducts as well as building interiors. Among the featured structures from Syracuse are the deep green Queen Anne-style home on North McBride Street, the Hamilton White House, Syracuse City Hall and the Octagon House in Camillus.

Reisem has written seven books since retiring from the communications department of Eastman Kodak in Rochester. The text he has produced for Erie Canal Legacy is a collection of anecdotes and fast facts about every canal community rather than a definitive history of the waterway. By including places that many upstaters have never heard of--Lock Berlin, Adams Basin, Danube, Halfmoon and Black Rock among them you'll be tempted to travel the waterway just to find them.

For an equally engaging look at another wonder of New York, the Adirondacks, pick up Adirondack Camps: Homes Away from Home, 1850-1950 by Craig Gilborn (Syracuse University Press; 367 pages; $49.95). Gilborn, former director of the Adirondack Museum, provides an extensive social and architectural history of the camps unique to the mountain region. Gilborn covers all types, from primitive bark shanties and logger cabins to great camps such as the famous Sagamore, using illustrations and photos both historical and contemporary.

"Inherent in the mystique of the Adirondack camp is a patrician disdain for pretension," writes Paul Malo, professor emeritus of architecture at Syracuse University, in the foreword. Adirondack Camps is unabashedly romantic about its subject material, and why not? Yes, this book inspires a yearning for summer vacations, but it also revives memories for the generations of New Yorkers who have spent time in the Adirondacks. Reading this book, or even perusing its photos, will bring it all back. If you've never had the pleasure of spending even a weekend in the mountains, Adirondack Camps just might infect you with that bug.

In his foreword to the book Local Heroes: Changing America (edited by Tom Rankin; W.W. Norton & Co., New York City; 288 pages; $29.95), journalist Ray Suarez notes a quote often attributed to Abraham Lincoln: "God must have loved the common people. He made so many of them." And those many common people are the subjects of this uplifting book, just one part of a national documentary project called Indivisible, which also features a museum tour, postcard exhibits, an audio CD and an interactive Web site.

Ithaca is featured in a 21-page chapter that focuses specifically on Alternatives Federal Credit Union and the barter system called Ithaca Hour. Quotes from AFCU manager and co-founder Bill Myers, Ithaca mayor Alan Cohen and many credit union members and Ithaca businesspeople explain the benefits of the decidedly alternative lending practices the credit union employs.

"Its impact on community development and individual opportunity is the real deal," writes Trudy Wilner Stack in the introduction to the chapter about AFCU, referred to as "the hippie bank" by some Ithacans.

Using both black-and-white and color photographs and interviews of citizens telling their stories, Local Heroes focuses on 12 U.S. communities and the issues they face--housing, immigration, the environment, crime prevention, health care, and economic and cultural development--and the innovative ways average citizens address them.

Each chapter is a story about the local heroes who define their respective communities. Stories are told as sound bites, pieces of interviews, along with photographs of people, places and things. Look carefully for the CD, attached to the inside back cover, and take a listen to the brief outtakes from the interviews; to find out who is speaking when, refer to the index two pages over. It's an easy listen while you're perusing the pages and adds to the experience to see the faces of those speaking. Beyond the chapter on Ithaca, take a look at those about Alaskan fishing communities, a Haitian Citizens Police Academy in Delray Beach, Fla., the Navajo Nation of the desert southwest and the Southwest Youth Collaborative of Chicago. In those, and the other seven chapters, you'll discover hundreds of local heroes, and take comfort in knowing that the common man can be uncommon indeed.