MISCELLANY

The Atlas of Ancient Rome: Biography and Portraits of the City,

edited by Andrea Carandini; translated from the Italian by Andrew Campbell Halavais (Princeton University Press; 1,280 pages; $199.50). You could spend $200 on a so-so hotel in Rome, or you could buy this two-volume slip-cased set to treasure for a lifetime. Carandini and a team of scholars devoted 20 years to this phenomenal work, which features a bounty of maps, 3-D reconstructions and photographs.

Expired,

photographs, by Kerry Mansfield (Modernbook Editions; 120 pages; $65). Mansfield, a San Francisco photographer, dignifies discarded library books in her sublime monograph, bound in a leather-wrap spine. “Each picture,” she writes with eloquence, “serves as an homage calling out palpable echoes etched into the pages by a margin-scrawled note, a yellowed coffee splatter or sticky peanut butter and jelly fingerprints . ... They show the evidence of everyone that has touched them, because they were well read, and often well loved.”

200 Women Who Will Change the Way You See the World,

edited by Ruth Hobday, Sharon Gelman, Marianne Lassandro and Geoff Blackwell (Chronicle Books; 396 pages; $50). An inspired project: Select 200 women from around the globe, from a wide array of backgrounds, and ask them questions such as “What really matters to you?” and “What brings you happiness?” Interviewees include author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Black Lives Matter co-founder Alicia Garza of Oakland and actor Alfre Woodard. With graceful portraits by photographer Kieran Scott.